Works on: AIX

AIX relies mostly on its own error reporting tools like errpt in order to keep track of incidents.

Thus, by default, AIX doesn't have a working configuration of syslog server, even though syslogd is installed. It simply lacks the proper configuration files.

Here are the steps to create a working configuration file and activate the service.

First, you have to create and edit the /etc/syslog.conf file. For example like this:

########
kern.debug;mail.none      /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.emerg;mail.none /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.alert;mail.none /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.crit;mail.none  /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.warning;mail.none       /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.err;mail.none   /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.notice;mail.none        /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
*.info;mail.none  /var/adm/messages       rotate size 2m files 3 compress
auth.notice     /var/adm/authlog        rotate size 2m files 3 compress
mail.info       /var/adm/mailerrors     rotate size 2m files 3 compress
########

This configuration allows you to rotate the logs on three files of 2MB each, and compress them.

Then, all you have to do is to run the following commands in order to create the log files, and restart the syslog service.
 
# touch /var/adm/messages
# touch /var/adm/authlog
# touch /var/adm/mailerrors
# refresh -s syslogd
 
If the configuration is successful, you will see a line resembling the following:
Nov 26 15:53:06 SERVER_NAME syslogd: restart
in the /var/adm/messages file right after running refresh -s syslogd

Happy computing.

Drop me a comment if this post has been useful to you, or if you see any reason for add-on or modification.

Nixman