Hi, I've had a long term issue where my system logs are always blank / empty. i.e

 

– Tools > System Log shows nothing

– /boot/logs contains only diagnostic files

 

I did enable the Unraid syslog server this morning, and pointed Unraid to log to its own IP, but no log files have been created in the share.

 

I haven't sought to fix this in the past because Unraid has been very stable, and always assumed a future update would fix it. But I'm now having few random lock-ups and would like to understand why.

 

Thanks.

unraidrack-diagnostics-20240522-1005.zip

Post the output of

ls -l /var/log

 

root@UnraidRack:~#  ls -l /var/log
total 96
-rw------- 1 root   root     0 Apr  3 22:35 btmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 cron
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 debug
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root   500 May 22 09:44 dhcplog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root 70757 May 22 09:43 dmesg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root  8944 May 22 09:44 docker.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Feb 13  2021 faillog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr  8  2000 lastlog
drwxr-xr-x 4 root   root   140 May 22 09:44 libvirt/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 maillog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 messages
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root    40 Aug 10  2022 nfsd/
drwxr-x--- 2 nobody root    60 May 22 09:44 nginx/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root    24 Apr  3 22:34 packages -> ../lib/pkgtools/packages/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root   root    80 Jan 19  2023 pkgtools/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root   340 May 22 09:44 plugins/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root    40 May 22 10:04 pwfail/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root    25 Apr  3 22:36 removed_packages -> pkgtools/removed_packages/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root    24 Apr  3 22:36 removed_scripts -> pkgtools/removed_scripts/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root   root    40 Jan 30  2023 sa/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root   320 May 22 09:44 samba/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root    23 Apr  3 22:34 scripts -> ../lib/pkgtools/scripts/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 secure
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root   root    21 Apr  3 22:34 setup -> ../lib/pkgtools/setup/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 spooler
drwxr-xr-x 3 root   root    60 Sep 27  2022 swtpm/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 Apr 28  2021 syslog
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 May 22 09:43 vfio-pci
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root     0 May 22 09:43 vfio-pci-errors
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root   utmp  6912 May 22 09:44 wtmp
root@UnraidRack:~# 

 

Thanks

Obviously something strange going on as that shows the syslog file with a size of 0 which I did not think was possible 😖

Not sure what could cause that, there's space in /var/log...

Something in User Scripts maybe?

 

What happens if you boot in SAFE mode?

Thanks for the suggestion. I've just rebooted in safe mode and ls -l /var/log still shows 0 size for the syslog file.

 

And I don't have any user scrips that trigger on boot - only a weekly rclone backup.

 

I do have this vague memory of many years ago having a log file that got big it clogged up the USB stick and I couldn't boot, so I guess I might have broken something in the course of fixing that. But unfortunately no idea what.

 

Edit: And I remember tinkering around with Nerdtools and not having a clue what I was doing, in case I've potentially broken something through that route.

Edited May 22, 20242 yr by Fozzuk

So I feel we're kinda out of ideas here. Since I have some free time this weekend, can anyone recommend whether a "clean install" might help?

 

I was thinking to set up an Unraid trial on a fresh USB stick, and transfer over the bare minimum from my old config – drive assignments and docker configs. Is that possible?

 

Thanks.

You could try a 'clean' install on another USB stick without bothering to get a licence and without transferring anything over initially or assigning any drives.    You can then see if a syslog is already being generated and decide depending on that result on the best way to proceed.

Good plan, thanks. I will try that over the weekend.

Update for anyone interested:

 

Created a fresh Unraid USB stick, booted from that and logs were running nicely. Given that worked (after fixing some network settings) I didn't really transfer much from the old install – just a few folders from config/plugins (especially dockerMan). Corrected settings (inc. share settings) manually.

 

So basically: there was no 'fix' to my missing logs but the 'clean install' was incredibly easy and took me about an hour. There's a lot of comments on this forum and reddit about every reboot being effectively a fresh install but that's demonstrably not the case here.

5 minutes ago, Fozzuk said:

There's a lot of comments on this forum and reddit about every reboot being effectively a fresh install

Every reboot IS a fresh install of the base OS in the sense that install is meant on most other systems.    However after completing such an install then settings are applied on top of it from the config folder on the flash drive.

 

Do you still have the 'config' folder from the point at which you were having problems?   If so I can see Limetech being interested in having a copy as it has to be something in there that was causing your problem and it would be nice to isolate the cause.

 

 

I still have a full backup of the old Config folder if anyone from Limetech wants to get in touch on that.

I can take a look if you want, you can DM me the zip, I can them report it to LT, if I find the issue.

I think I'm running into the same thing - before I do a clean install was there anything identified?  I'm trying to troubleshoot persistent crashes since upgrading U7b2 to support an ARC GPU and seeing frequent crashes and no logs in syslog.

Hi, apologies but I didn't share my Config file in the end as I was concerned about confidentiality.

 

I would just do the "clean install" – it took me about 60mins and I wished I'd done it sooner given all the time I'd wasted troubleshooting inoperative logs. Just use a fresh USB stick so you always have any prior data or the option to go back to the old config.