Operating system error logs

GPFS records file system or disk failures by using the error logging facility provided by the operating system: syslog facility on Linux®, errpt facility on AIX®, and Event Viewer on Windows.

The error logging facility is referred to as the error log regardless of operating system specific error log facility naming conventions.

Note: Most logs use the UNIX command logrotate to tidy up older logs. Not all options of the command are supported on some older operating systems. This could lead to unnecessary log entries. However, it does not interfere with the script. While using logrotate you might come across the following errors:

error opening /var/adm/ras/mmsysmonitor.log:Too many levels of symbolic links.
unknown option 'maxsize' -- ignoring line.

This is the expected behavior and the error can be ignored.

Failures in the error log can be viewed by issuing this command on an AIX node:

errpt -a

and this command on a Linux node:

grep "mmfs:" /var/log/messages

You can also grep the appropriate filename where syslog messages are redirected to. For example, in Ubuntu, after the Natty release, this file is at /var/log/syslog.

On Windows, use the Event Viewer and look for events with a source label of GPFS in the Application event category.

On Linux, syslog might include GPFS log messages and the error logs described in this section. The systemLogLevel attribute of the mmchconfig command controls which GPFS log messages are sent to syslog. It is recommended that some kind of monitoring for GPFS log messages be implemented, particularly MMFS_FSSTRUCT errors. For more information, see the mmchconfig command.

The error log contains information about several classes of events or errors. These classes are: