Logs

Records written to files by software running on a computer. A system can have many different log files. For example, there might be a main system log file where errors notices are written as they occur, as well as log files for database and web servers. Log files can grow very large so there is usually a need to manage them in some way. One strategy is to keep a certain number of days' worth of log files and rotate them such that mylog.log is today's log, mylog.log.1 is yesterday's, and so on, with the last day dropping from storage each day. A more cautious approach is to store all older log files on tape or other removable media as opposed to deleting them. Log files are often vital when trouble-shooting system and application failures, and checking for problems and security attacks.

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