Logwatch

logwatch is a daily task that summarizes the logs on a machine and generates a nicely-formatted email message describing them.

Installation

Install it by executing emerge -av logwatch. In the default configuration, logwatch will run on a nightly basis and email the results to root.

Configuration

This part is non-obvious. The default configuration is in /usr/share/logwatch/default.conf/logwatch.conf. You can add/override settings there by adding them to /etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf. Note that the conf/ directory does not exist on a fresh install. Here are some suggestions:

# Disable the disk-space display
Service="-zz-disk_space"

# Send mail elsewhere
MailTo="me@myhost.com"

# Give me more information
Detail=Med