OK i've got a couple of questions on syslogd, first off... if i forward the messages remotely, is there any way to also store them locally?

second is in syslog.conf, i don't quite understand the source part of the configuration, so in the statement
mail.=debug /usr/adm/mail
what excactly does the mail. represent? i mean, does it represent any mail process such as sendmail and qmail and all the other mail daemons? What if i wanted to have iptables as my source would it just be
iptables.=debug /usr/adm/iptables_debug
also what is the . there for?

i could use any help or links to some help that i can get.

You can duplicate rules for remote/local logging:

*.err /var/log/err.log
*.err @remotehost-address

The dot separates the facility (think daemon name, like LOCAL0, mail, kernel) from the level (type, debug to critical).
Ie, a rule starting with "kern.*" would accept all messages as spat out by the kernel, whereas "*.debug" would flood the logfile with all debug-level messages from any daemon.

HTH.

ok i kind of get it now, but what does the = mean then cause it seems kind of useless. also can the facility be from any daemon like dhcpd or are their predefined facilities which it could use? and if it can be from any daemon how would i specify something such as dhcpd, would
dhcp.debug /var/log/dhcp_debug
work?