This script allows you to change the location of the logging on an existing FreeNAS system. This is helpful if you want to enable persistent logging on your server without having to setup a remote syslog server.
Typically, you will want to change the logging directory to somewhere on a dataset.
Please note that running this script will change the way the restore factory default function works. However, if you run the --reset option of this script then it will restore the original factory default filesystem. Also, note that the script makes a backup of the configuration files that it changes.
Boot messages will likely not appear in the messages log anymore, since the
persistent storage device is usually mounted toward the end of the boot
process. To see these messages on a running system you can always run dmesg.
Update: The script no longer disables the daily emails set in periodic.conf since FreeNAS 9.2 now has those turned off by default (see the Release Notes: http://iso.cdn.freenas.org/9.2.0/RELEASE/ReleaseNotes). If you are setting up an older FreeNAS version, use the script from an older commit to have these disabled: https://raw.github.com/jag3773/FreeNAS-Change-Logging/fe0b06fa2605ae302b2fc7223252ebdc8f00794f/FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh.
The script has been tested and found to be working on FreeNAS 8 and 9.
Update: As of FreeNAS 9.2 I believe that the .system dataset receives logging by default. Thus, the use of this script on 9.2+ is discouraged.
The following files are modified by this script:
/conf/base/etc/newsyslog.conf
/conf/base/etc/syslog.conf
Existing log files are also copied to the new log destination.
Download the script and make it executable, you'll need to cd into a directory that is writable:
cd /mnt/tank0
fetch https://raw.github.com/jag3773/FreeNAS-Change-Logging/master/FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh
chmod +x FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh
To change the location of the logging from /var/log (the default), run:
./FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh -d <New_Log_Directory>
NOTE: The script will create the logging directory you pass to it if it does not exist already.
Also, the script may take a while to run if you are booting off of a slow device (some USB thumb drives are pretty slow).
To revert back to the factory default (/var/log), run:
./FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh -r
If you change the logging to a custom location and later want to change it to a different custom location, then you must reset the logging first. As an example:
./FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh -d /mnt/tank0/oops
./FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh -r
./FreeNAS-Change-Logging.sh -d /mnt/tank0/log
Note: Some logs may continue writing to the old location, even after a reset, most notably, Nginx. System process should start writing to the new location right away. If you need to have other services update their logging location then you will need to restart those services or reboot the system.