Linux.com: Build a Centralized Log Management and Monitoring System

“Seasoned system administrators know that routinely reading
system logs is an important task, but reading endless lines from
logs is both time-consuming and boring, especially if you are
responsible for a large number of busy servers. In this article I
will show you how to set up a system that gathers and archives
system logs from many network hosts and emails only important or
irregular system events to administrators.

“The majority of GNU/Linux distributions uses the good old
syslogd system logger by default, which is based on the original
4.3BSD syslogd daemon. Syslogd is a fine system logger, but it
lacks some advanced features modern alternatives offer. We will use
syslog-ng instead, which provides all the functionality of the
traditional syslogd along with some nice enhancements. Among
others, it provides powerful filtering capabilities based on
message content, and can also be used in a firewalled environment
without problems…”

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