Print Page - Question about log ordering (system.log)

Title: Question about log ordering (system.log)
Post by: direx on May 23, 2019, 09:19:36 PM

Hi,

I think this might be a general BSD question: I am wondering about the ordering of log entries in OPNsense. Could somebody explain this to me:

Code Select

# cat /var/log/system.log | awk '{print $1 $2}' | uniq
600:14:56
May16
May17
May18
May19
May20
May21
May22
May23
rc.dyndns:Dynamic
May14
May15
May16
May1CLOG

What I don't understand is:

Why is the most current log entry not the last line in the file?
Why does the ordering change somewhere right in between the file? It goes from May 23 to May 14.

I am coming from Linux and I have never seen something this odd before. To me it looks like a corrupt file or filesystem, or is this normal?

Thanks,
direx

Title: Re: Question about log ordering (system.log)
Post by: franco on May 23, 2019, 09:26:10 PM

Hi direx,

Use "clog" instead of "cat". It's a circular log format of fixed size flushing out old entries for new ones. It's not a plain text file.

Cheers,
Franco

Title: Re: Question about log ordering (system.log)
Post by: direx on May 23, 2019, 10:09:18 PM

Hi Franco,

thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. I felt like a total Unix noob when first using less/grep/cat on these log files :D

- direx

Title: Re: Question about log ordering (system.log)
Post by: franco on May 24, 2019, 11:58:35 AM

It's non-obvious so no worries. We do have a bit of docs for this nowadays too. :)

https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/logging.html#circular-logs

Cheers,
Franco

OPNsense Forum

English Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: direx on May 23, 2019, 09:19:36 PM