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Drew Noakes
Asked: 2014-10-31 03:15:09 +0800 CST

Write to syslog from the command line

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How can I write an entry into /var/log/syslog from the command line?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. Use the logger command.

    logger Some message to write

    There are several options available, including:

    -i Log the process ID in each line
-f Log the contents of a specified file
-n Write to the specified remote syslog server
-p Specify a priority
-t Tag the line with a specified tag

    See man 1 logger for more information on the tool.

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  2. Alternatively, you can write to syslog from python:

    python -c 'import syslog; syslog.syslog("Hello World")'
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  3. As a dev, I rarely have time to closely study man pages, so TLDR:

    logger -p local0.notice -t ${0##*/}[$$] Hello world

    The gibberish in the middle will translate to the calling program. So if you check the bottom of syslog you'll see something like:

    May 07 08:27:14 ip-10-1-11-166 -bash[42108]: Hello world
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