kern.log is empty

Question

I've been noticing that my computer has been taking alot of time to shutdown.

I decided I would look in some log files and see if I could find the culprit. When I checked in kern.log it was completely empty and I found that strange.

Is this normal and what would cause it if it isn't?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 27 '13 at 18:59

Logs rotate. So it's possible you've checked at the same time.

Do you have kern.log.1 or any zipped kern.log files, assuming you have that's all normal.

Check the man file for logrotate.

man logrotate

logrotate ‐ rotates, compresses, and mails system logs

The configuration file for logrotate is at /etc/logrotate.conf

Mine is vanilla. You can see there what it's expected to do.

# see "man logrotate" for details
# rotate log files weekly
weekly

# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
rotate 4

# create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones
create

# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed
#compress

# packages drop log rotation information into this directory
include /etc/logrotate.d

# no packages own wtmp, or btmp -- we'll rotate them here
/var/log/wtmp {
    missingok
    monthly
    create 0664 root utmp
    rotate 1
}

/var/log/btmp {
    missingok
    monthly
    create 0660 root utmp
    rotate 1
}

# system-specific logs may be configured here

kern.log is empty

1 Answers1