Every multi-purpose Linux system produces an enormous amount of log data. To prevent your hard disk from overflowing, a rotating helper application archives logs and gets rid of obsolete data.
You have to be a very special kind of person to actually enjoy evaluating logfiles. But you have to admit that the logfiles in /var/log give administrators exactly the kind of information they need to discover the origins of mysterious system errors. Log files also provide information on whether services on the system are working. If you have any trouble installing a daemon or running a script, the logs can tell you what went wrong. Paranoid admins – and that should be all of us – check their systems for unauthorized access and block any traces they find.
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