Apple Mac OS X Server (Version 10.6 Snow Leopard) - Manual (Page 185)

Chapter 8 Monitoring Your System 185
Logging
Mac OS X Server maintains standard UNIX log files and Apple-specific process logs.
Logs for the OS can be found in:
/var/log Â
/Library/Logs Â
~/Library/Logs Â
Each process is responsible for its own logs, the log level, and verbosity. Each process
or application can write its own log file or use a system standard log, like syslog. You
can use the Console application (in /Applications/Utilities) to read these and other
plain-text log files regardless of location.
The logs are set to roll (compress and rename the log file) every 5 MB.
Most services in Mac OS X Server have a logging pane in Server Admin. You can use
these panes to set logging levels and view the logs for any particular service.
Syslog
The system log, syslog, is a consolidated catch-all location for process log messages.
syslog has several levels of available log detail. If you select low detail logging,
detailed messages are not saved, but high detail logging results in large and possibly
unhelpfully large log files.
The level of logging you use for syslog can be tuned by process and should be
relevant to the level necessary for successful notification and debugging.
Syslog log levels (in ascending order from least to most detail)
Level name Level indicator in syslog.conf Amount of detail
None .none None
Emergency .emerg Least
Alert .alert
Error .err
Warning .warn
Notice .notice
Info .info
Debug .debug Most