# Is there a System activity log in X?



## kon21 (Jun 26, 2002)

Does anyone know if OS X has a system log similar to the Event Manager in Windows? My machine was shut down when I got home and I want to find out if it was shutdown by someone or if there was a power failure.

thanks.


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## erikstonge (Jun 26, 2002)

Open Console from Utilities of Applications folder, On File menu, select Open Log...
If you view system.log in your right, open it. Else, in Go To:, type /var/log/system.log


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## Chibi15 (Jun 27, 2002)

Or even better to find out if there was an crash:

open Terminal and type in *last*

You will get a list that looks somewhat like this


```
chibi15   ttyp2                     Thu Jun 27 00:44   still logged in
chibi15   ttyp2                     Thu Jun 27 00:29 - 00:44  (00:15)
chibi15   ttyp3                     Wed Jun 26 14:21 - shutdown  (08:02)
```

Crashes are also logged!


```
chibi15   console  localhost        Wed Jun 26 05:14 - crash  (07:58)
```

And here - my first time running OSX on my new iMac 


```
chibi15   ttyp1                     Sat Jun  1 06:17 - 07:43  (01:25)
```


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## kon21 (Jun 29, 2002)

What is the systems defininishion of a crash?
the LAST command reports 5 crashes in the last 3 days. Which I know are not true. Is it possible for a application to not quit properly and have LAST report it as a crash?

thanks.


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## Chibi15 (Jun 29, 2002)

No - i think last only reports crashes on the system-level
Maybe it looks if each login also have its counterpart logout - but i dont really know - sorry


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## chemistry_geek (Jun 29, 2002)

All system logs are located in a hidden folder called *private*.

Here is the full path:

*/private/var/log/system.log*

To get to this folder in the Finder:
1. Click on the "Go" menu, select "Go To Folder..." or press [Command-~].

2. In the window that pops up, type */var/log/*.

3. A new window will open on the desktop that has ALL system logs for everything, ftp.log, daily.out, mail.log, system.log, etc...

4. These are standard TEXT files, and can be quite large.  You can open them in TextEdit or BBEdit, or your favorite word processor of choice.

5. Also in this folder are compressed archives / backups of previous logs using the "gz" compression scheme.  To look at these files, just drop their icon on top of Stuffit Expander or double click on them.

6. You can configure the Console to launch and display a status window whenever a program crashes.  To me it contains a lot of giberish, but it lets me know which program crashed.

Enjoy!

Incidentally, this was how I learned that someone tried hacking into my system 4X, unsuccessfully.


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