Anaconda/Logging

Introduction

Anaconda tracks all of its activities in logs. This includes:

• changing installation steps (that roughly correspond to different screens in the graphical installer)
• storage devices detection and manipulation
• installation media detection
• network initialization
• kernel messages
• calls to critical methods within anaconda
• calls to external programs

Logging on the installed system

During the installation the logs are stored in the /tmp directory:

• /tmp/anaconda.log, the general installation information, particularly the step changes.
• /tmp/storage.log, storage devices scan and manipulation (hard drives, partitions, LVM, RAID), partitioning
• /tmp/program.log, calls to external programs, their output
• /tmp/messages.log, messages from kernel and external programs (Network Manager)
• /tmp/yum.log, yum's internal log

Certain log messages are also written to the terminals.

• /dev/tty3, messages from anaconda.log, storage.log and yum.log.
• /dev/tty4, same as messages.log
• /dev/tty5, stdout and stderr from external programs

tty3 and tty4 reflect certain log files. Log files always contain messages from all the loglevels. The minimal loglevel on the terminals however can be controlled with the loglevel command line option.

There are two other log files created on the target filesystem, in the /root directory, also accessible at /mnt/sysimage/root during the installation:

• /mnt/sysimage/root/install.log, log of the package installation process.
• /mnt/sysimage/root/install.log.syslog, messages from installation chroot logged through the system's syslog. Mostly information about users and groups created during yum's package installation.

Remote logging

Anaconda supports remote logging handled through the rsyslog daemon running on the installed system. It can be configured to forward its logs through TCP to an arbitrary machine in network that is also running a syslog daemon. This is controlled with the syslog command line option

To do

The current list of logging requirements and tasks is maintained in bugzilla 524980.

This page:

• remote logging details
• tty logging
• how loglevel works