Logwatch is a Perl-based log management tool for analyzing, summarizing, and reporting on a server’s log files. It most often is used to send a short digest of a server’s log activity to a system administrator.
What are log files? Logs are application-generated files useful for tracking down and understanding what has happened in the past.
Pre-Flight Check
- These instructions are intended specifically for installing logwatch on Fedora 23. If you’re on another operating system, you can find instructions for installing logwatch on Fedora 22, CentOS 7, and Ubuntu 14.04.
- We’ll be working as root on a Liquid Web Self Managed Fedora 23 server.
Step #1: Install Logwatch
As a matter of best practice we’ll first update our packages:
dnf -y update
Now we’ll install Logwatch and any required packages:
dnf -y install logwatch
Step #2: Configuration File Locations
Local configuration options can be found in:
/etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf
Default configuration options can be found in:
/usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf
It is best practice to leave the default configuration as is, and edit the local configuration file, which is under /etc as listed above.