reading the maillog file on a mail relay server

JGJONES58 · 06-26-2015, 06:03 PM

Greetings all:

I am investigating an issue involving a mail relay and the maillog file. I need to see what the error that was associated with a failed mail forward yesterday, but can't seem to grep, less or vi the file, as I get "permission denied."

Does this mean I need a sysadmin to give me privileges to read the file? I thought all files on a UNIX system could at least be "read" if the file was not going to be written to ...

Thanks.

astrogeek · 06-26-2015, 06:23 PM

Welcome to LQ!

Quote:

Originally Posted by JGJONES58

I am investigating an issue involving a mail relay and the maillog file. I need to see what the error that was associated with a failed mail forward yesterday, but can't seem to grep, less or vi the file, as I get "permission denied."

Does this mean I need a sysadmin to give me privileges to read the file? I thought all files on a UNIX system could at least be "read" if the file was not going to be written to ...

No, you thought wrong! And system log files are generally restricted access, mail logs doubly so - or should be anyway!

Yes, you will need someone with correct permissions to get that information for you.

JGJONES58 · 06-26-2015, 07:01 PM

Thanks astrogeek. This is what I suspected -- just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something -- some way to view the log file.

I appreciate the quick response!