No logging occuring to /var/log/messages

[Bruce Marshall]

I made a stupid boo-boo yesterday and filled up my root partition.

Didn't take long to correct the situation but in the process, I guess the 
system paniced and deleted all of my  /var/log/messages and messages.x files.

Ok, that's nice...   but having reinstated a messages file (empty) and checked 
on rsyslogd (which is running) and rebooting, I still don't get any messages 
in the file.

I've used logger to create a message but it only goes to /var/log/syslog and 
not to /var/log/messages.  Googling for the problem has not yeilded any 
solutions.

Anyone have a clue to this?