Duplicate logging?

[David Henningsson]

Hi!

I've been in the Linux/Ubuntu world for a while now but I still haven't
grasped the logging. And I'm not sure if this the right mailing list to
ask, but...

There are a lot of log files in /var/log and when I look into them often
the same message are in several log files. Apart from the logs that
directly relate to a particular application, we have at least:

/var/log/daemon.log
/var/log/debug.log
/var/log/dmesg
/var/log/kern.log
/var/log/messages
/var/log/syslog
/var/log/user.log

I've been trying to Google a little about it, but I'm still confused. Is
there an overview of what messages go into what logs and why there are
so many duplicates?

E g, I can find the same kernel message in five logs: debug, dmesg,
kern, messages, and syslog. Seems like waste of space, or am I missing
something...?

// David