Viewing application log files

In the last section of this chapter, let’s explore log files a bit, as they bring several concepts that we’ve discussed full circle. We went through an overview of the default directory layout, practiced viewing files, and we learned how to search files for strings. We’ll discuss log files in greater detail later on in the book, but we can use all of these concepts to take an initial look at viewing log files now.

If you recall, during the discussion of the Linux filesystem layout earlier in this chapter, there was a table showing some of the most common directories that exist. Among the items in that table, I called out the /var/log directory. While logging is transitioning to a different style (more on that in Chapter 22, Troubleshooting Ubuntu Servers), we’ll have a series of logs in the /var/log directory. Go ahead and use the ls command yourself, and you’ll see there are quite a few files there. While I won...