Troubleshooting

If your having trouble with RSyslog you may wish to follow some of the troubleshooting information in this documentation. Alternatively, you can review the official RSyslog Troubleshooting Documentation. If that still doesn't solve your problems, you can contact us, and we'll help you figure things out!

Check Installation

To see if the RSyslog daemon is installed, you can run the following terminal command:

command -v rsyslogd

If RSyslog is installed, the output of this command will be the path to the RSyslog binary. If nothing is returned by this command, rsyslog is probably not installed.

For installation instructions, please refer to the official RSyslog Installation Documentation.

To see if the RSyslog daemon is running, you can run the following terminal command:

pgrep rsyslogd

If RSyslog is running, the output of this command will be the process ID of the currently running RSyslog daemon process.

If nothing is returned by this command, the RSyslog daemon is not running. In most RSyslog installations, the following command will start the RSyslog daemon:

systemctl start rsyslog

Debugging

If you run into issues, you may wish to inspect the behaviour of the RSyslog daemon. To do so, you can configure RSyslog to create a debug log. Add the following lines at the beginning of your rsyslog.conf file:

$DebugFile /tmp/rsyslogd.log
$DebugLevel 2

A DebugLevel of 2 activates always-on debug mode, while a level of 0 turns debug mode off. For other debugging options, please refer to the RSyslog Debug Log Documentation.

To apply the configuration changes, restart the RSyslog daemon process:

systemctl restart rsyslog

You can now review the RSyslog debug logs at /tmp/rsyslogd.log. When you're done, make sure to deactivate debug mode by undoing the configuration changes and restarting RSyslog again.