About logs
Symantec Messaging Gateway keeps log records of component activity on Symantec Messaging Gateway. If any part of Symantec Messaging Gateway does not work properly, you can view logs to investigate the problem. Even if you do not notice any problems, Symantec recommends that you view logs regularly to check the status of the components.
You can specify the level of information that you want to log for each of your Scanners. Some levels can yield high volumes of data. Set the log levels to the lowest level that meets your monitoring needs. The default log level of warning is usually appropriate.
You view log data in the Control Center. You can sort log data, create log reports, and clear log files from the database. You can also view logs using the command line interface with the
cat
, grep
, more
, and tail
commands. The command line interface displays real-time log data. In addition to viewing logs using the Control Center, some Scanner logs can be sent to syslog on a remote server.
Symantec Messaging Gateway lets you configure the log database size to prevent the database from filling the hard disk. It also provides a log Expunger utility that lets you set automatic purges at specified intervals.
Scanner logs are made available in the Control Center in two steps: First, incoming data files are captured to a temporary location on the Scanner. Next, the Control Center accesses the temporary location and copies the data to the Control Center log database. Once the log data from the Scanner is transferred to the Control Center, the system deletes log data on the Scanner to conserve disk space.
In some circumstances the Scanner logs can fill up the disk faster than the Control Center can copy the data to the log database. If a Scanner disk nears or reaches capacity, the system reduces or halts logging and no logs are copied to the Control Center log database. You must free disk space for normal logging to resume.