up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I've got a vSphere 4.1 ESXi test box here, and for some reason it went down at some point today. I turned it back on, but can't find out where it keeps its logs for the time when it became unavailable. Looking in /var/log every log seems to only start from the last time since it was power cycled, which is absolutely useless if I'm trying to find a log entry for the event which caused it to shut down.

Any ideas?

link|improve this question
89% accept rate
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

We went through this with VMware support a few weeks ago, and their solution was to use an external syslog server. That obviously won't help you with this instance, but going forward you'll have all the logs.

link|improve this answer
Thanks. It's slightly ridiculous, but I'll just have to set up a syslog server just for this tiny environment. – growse Apr 24 '11 at 7:08
Sorta ridiculous, yes, but it's generally a best practice to have a central syslog server, anyway... – ErikA Apr 24 '11 at 15:19
are you saing that ESXi purges all the previous logs after reboot? – Vick Vega Apr 25 '11 at 16:05
My understanding is that ESXi doesn't keep any logs on disk at all. – ErikA Apr 25 '11 at 16:06
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.