Monitoring Application Logs

Welcome to the world of Linux logging! As software developers, understanding logging in Linux, especially with tools like systemd and journald, is crucial. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know.

Logs are records of events happening in a software application or operating system. It’s a flexible format and unique to each application, but how logs are processed, stored, and retrieved is more uniform on modern systems. It’s essential for you to understand logs as a developer because the logs you can access in Linux provide insights into the behavior of the operating system and all applications running on it. You’ll use this knowledge to understand errors, track application performance, and debug. Logs are your first line of defense in troubleshooting, so prepare to get comfortable with them.

In this chapter, we’ll give you an overview of Unix and Linux logging, and show you the most common ways that software...