Syslog not logging anything; /var/log/syslog is empty

Question

Recently sendmail stopped accepting messages for delivery on my Solaris 10 x86 machine. I am trying to diagnose the problem but syslog doesn't seem to be working either. My /etc/syslog.conf:

#ident  "@(#)syslog.conf        1.5     98/12/14 SMI"   /* SunOS 5.0 */
#
# Copyright (c) 1991-1998 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
# All rights reserved.
#
# syslog configuration file.
#
# This file is processed by m4 so be careful to quote (`') names
# that match m4 reserved words.  Also, within ifdef's, arguments
# containing commas must be quoted.
#
*.err;kern.notice;auth.notice                   /dev/sysmsg
*.err;kern.debug;daemon.notice;mail.crit        /var/adm/messages

*.alert;kern.err;daemon.err                     operator
*.alert                                         root

*.emerg                                         *

# if a non-loghost machine chooses to have authentication messages
# sent to the loghost machine, un-comment out the following line:
#auth.notice                    ifdef(`LOGHOST', /var/log/authlog, @loghost)
auth.info               /var/log/authlog

mail.info               /var/log/maillog


#
# non-loghost machines will use the following lines to cause "user"
# log messages to be logged locally.
#
ifdef(`LOGHOST', ,
user.err                                        /dev/sysmsg
user.err                                        /var/adm/messages
user.alert                                      `root, operator'
local7.debug                                    /var/log/mimedefang
user.emerg                                      *
)

/var/log/authlog works. So does /var/log/mimedefang and /var/adm/messages. However, /var/log/syslog is empty and the last line in /var/log/syslog.0 is from over a month ago. /var/log/maillog is also empty. I have restarted system-log and sendmail multiple times using svcadm. Is there something wrong with my syslog.conf?

Answer 1

As @MadHatter states above, syslog.conf does not mention /var/log/syslog anywhere. Therefore, no logs will be written to /var/log/syslog.

If I remember right, most Solaris systems had a line which looks like this in syslog.conf:

mail.info                     ifdef(`LOGHOST', /var/log/syslog, @loghost)

OR

mail.debug                      ifdef(`LOGHOST', /var/log/syslog, @loghost)

OR

mail.info                     /var/log/syslog

Answer 2

My /etc/syslog.conf (andLinux) contains

*.*;auth,authpriv.none          -/var/log/syslog

The one you posted doesn't mention /var/log/syslog.