Viewing system logs

If you’re having trouble finding the root cause, or you just want more information regarding a problem that occurred, consider looking through log files. Linux has great logging capabilities, and many of the applications you may be running are writing log files as events happen. If there’s an issue, you may be able to find information about it within an application’s logs.

There are two primary methods of viewing logs. Historically, for most of Ubuntu’s life, you could simply inspect the log files that are stored within the /var/log directory. The files contained within that directory are standard files and directories, so you can use commands you’ve used in the past to view the contents of text files to view the contents of the log files within the /var/log directory as well. This method of viewing log files is slowly being aged out; however, the majority of applications still store their log files within that directory,...