Whether you are a System Administrator or not, it is important to regularly analyze logs. Log files help us understand the current status of our system. If there is an issue with the system then it is good to check the log files first.
In Ubuntu, we can find log files in the directory /var/log. The number of log files varies depending on our systems’ configuration. Some log files that you may find in your system are:
/var/log/messages – A generic log file for messages.
/var/log/dmesg – kernel log messages.
/var/log/secure – security-related messages, mainly authentication errors.
/var/log/cups – Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) related log messages.
Now, coming back to the purpose of the article – System Log Viewer in Ubuntu. There are numerous command-line tools that can help us read log files. The article mainly deals with the GUI-based applications that can help us get the same. There are mainly two applications that we cover here – GNOME Logs & System Log Viewer for GNOME.
Note: Following operations require superuser privileges. In case you don’t have one then we advise you to contact your System Administrator.
We cover the installation of each of these applications next. Both packages are part of the standard Ubuntu repository. First, we have to update the repository. Open a terminal and issue the following –
sudo apt update
If we skip the above step then we may not receive the latest available version of the package we intend to install.
Install GNOME Logs in Ubuntu
To install GNOME Logs, issue the following command in the terminal –
sudo apt install gnome-logs
Once it’s installed, it would be there as Logs in our Systems’ main menu.
Install System Log Viewer for GNOME in Ubuntu
To install GNOME System Log Viewer in Ubuntu, run the following command in the terminal –
sudo apt install gnome-system-log
After the installation, we run the application – System Log from our Systems’ main menu.
In conclusion, we have covered the installation of two GUI-based applications: GNOME Logs and GNOME System Log Viewer in Ubuntu here.
