Hi list,

I am Jayasimha from India, currently working on a log monitoring application on Linux. I am facing an issue about the way the command 'init' logs messages.

The issue I am facing is this - Whenever the init level (runlevel) on an RHEL 3.O box, is changed, the message gets logged to the files /var/log/wtmp (in binary format) and to /var/log/messages (in text format). I can see it when i tail /var/log/messages. Also when I use last -x command, it reports the same to me.

However, in RHEL 5.0 box, I see that the init level change is logged only to /var/log/wtmp. I see the output of last -x correctly shows it. But, the entry regarding the same to /var/log/messages is missing.


Do, I have to make any changes in the system for this entry to appear? I googled around and could not find much information regarding this. Will these kind of changes be documented by RH? I also saw the strace output of changing init level on RHEL 3.0 and did not see any line w.r.t opening /var/log/messages for logging output.

I noticed that a similar question has been posted here in Linux Questions (I am not able to paste the URL here because of an error I am getting regarding a moderation policy here), but the OP has not answered back.

Please provide some pointers on simulating the RHEL 3.0 behaviour in RHEL 5.0 with regards to this runlevel switch.

Thanks In Advance,
--Jayasimha

Compare the differences in your syslog.conf file where most system logs are told to write the output to.

I forgot to mention in the orignal mail - I did compare the syslog.conf file (located in /etc/ directory) and found that there were no changes.

Just to confirm that in CentOS-5, using SysVinit-2.86-14, runlevel changes are logged to syslog.