All system logs empty

MrSnuggles

Hi everyone

I installed pfSense on an apu2d4 and had it before on an older apu for years. On my most recent install now the system does not log anything that would show under System Logs:

It does not matter which tab I click on. System, Firewall, DHCP... all are empty. pfSense is installed on a 32GB SSD and 27GB are free. I tried enabling RAM disks to check whether this would work, but nah. I also restored factory defaults and logging would still not work on the fresh install, prior to importing the old configuration. What could the issue be? What can I do to figure it out?

Checking the /var/log directory also did not help. Except for the fact that dmesg.boot does actually log stuff. So it does not seem to be a problem with partitions or permissions I believe.

Every other system feature I tried works: Installing new packages (Snort, OpenVPN, pfBlockerNG) and these packages can log their own messages like snort alerts for example.

EDIT: I'm currently running pfSense version 2.4.4

stephenw10

What pfSense version is that? You have log files dated 2017 there, which seems wrong but I'm not sure I've ever checked on a clean install.

Anyway I would suggest the syslog daemon is just not running. Check Status > Services. Normally I'd suggest checking the logs but....

Check dmesg though to see if any errors are shown.

Steve

MrSnuggles

Hey Steve

thanks for your reply. pfSense should be on the newest version (v4.0.11). The syslogd service is running happily. The dmesg output also did not show anything unusual (https://pastebin.com/HUng57jE).

Gertjan

@MrSnuggles said in All system logs empty:

pfSense should be on the newest version (v4.0.11).

I advice you to ditch whatever you have and use the real pfSense : https://www.pfsense.org/download/

jimp

Go to the settings tab and click the button to reset all your log files.

MrSnuggles

Resolved!

@Gertjan said in All system logs empty:

@MrSnuggles said in All system logs empty:

pfSense should be on the newest version (v4.0.11).

I advice you to ditch whatever you have and use the real pfSense : https://www.pfsense.org/download/

Oops I quoted the BIOS version (4.0.11) instead of the pfsense version (2.4.4). Should be as official as it gets. Otherwise I would be surprised

@jimp said in All system logs empty:

Go to the settings tab and click the button to reset all your log files.

Thanks! I had the same idea after reading what Steve pointed out about the logs being from 2017. Ran rm -rf /var/log and now the system is logging happily. I don't understand though what the problem was since the permissions look exactly the same now. At least I have logging back Thanks again!