About Log Viewer

Log Viewer lets you view and manage log files for Solaris Management Console tools and events. For example, log entries are generated for session open, session close, authentication success, and authentication failure. Log files are stored by default in /var/sadm/wbem/log.


Note: Log Viewer entries are generated by events logged to the WBEM logging service. Log Viewer entries are not the same as those written by syslog, which captures messages generated by various system processes and writes those messages out to the device console, to system log files, or to both. Furthermore, the listings in Console Events differ from both Log Viewer and syslog, and provides information only about events between the Solaris Management Console and its tools. That information is lost once you close the SMC.


For any given management server running SMC, a single log file is used to log all SMC events for all management domains defined on that management server. By default, only log entries for the currently active management domain (single server or name service) are displayed.

You can set a maximum size for your log files by using the Action->Log File Settings command. When a log file reaches the maximum size specified in the Log File Settings dialog box, the file is automatically backed up and a new log file is started.

For best performance, it is generally desirable to make your log files as small as possible. The tradeoff with small log files is speed versus convenience. For example, there may be times when you want to be able to view the results of a long job -- say, one run over several days -- all in one log file. In such cases, the performance hit taken by having a large log file may be less important to you than being able to view the file in one contiguous chunk.