Logs

Servers and Mac OS X itself creates and stores log files in system directories. These log files can be used to analyze, monitor or troubleshooting Mac OS X. Cocktail provides different tools to help the workflow when working with logs. Cocktail provides tools for working with log files as well as clearing them. One can use Cocktail to view, archive, print, rotate, clear or save a copy of the log files. Besides regular view of log files Cocktail provides the possibility to view log files in reversed ordering and to show a limited number of rows. These two features can drastically enhance how you work with you log files.

Cocktail has support for 28 system logs. There is also a possibility to open and view third party logs. These logs can however not be rotated or cleared. You can also use Cocktail to free up disk space by deleting rotated log files. Mac OS X log files can be found in the system directory /private/var/log/ and /Library/Logs/ .

Logs:

Apple System
/private/var/log/asl.log

Console
/Library/Logs/Console/UID/console.log

Crash Reporter
/private/var/log/crashreporter.log

Cups Access
/private/var/log/cups/access_log
Cups Error
/private/var/log/cups/error_log

Cups Page
/private/var/log/cups/page_log

Directory Service Server
/Library/Logs/DirectoryService/DirectoryService.server.log

Directory Service Error
/Library/Logs/DirectoryService/DirectoryService.error.log

File Sharing Access
/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceAccess.log

File Sharing Error
/Library/Logs/AppleFileService/AppleFileServiceError.log

Firewall
/private/var/log/ipfw.log

FTP
/private/var/log/ftp.log

Install
/private/var/log/install.log

Lookupd
/private/var/log/lookupd.log

LPR/IP Printing
/private/var/log/lpr.log

Mail
/private/var/log/mail.log

NetInfo
/private/var/log/netinfo.log

Panic
/Library/Logs/panic.log

PPP
/private/var/log/ppp.log

Secure
/private/var/log/secure.log

Software Update
/Library/Logs/Software Update.log

System
/private/var/log/system.log

Web Sharing Access
/private/var/log/httpd/access_log

Web Sharing Error
/private/var/log/httpd/error_log

Window Server
/private/var/log/windowserver.log

Window Server Last
/private/var/log/windowserver_last.log

Windows Sharing File
/private/var/log/samba/log.smbd

Windows Sharing Name
/private/var/log/samba/log.nmbd

Crash and hang reports are created by Mac OS X as a consequence of a crash or hang. Apple mobile devices (iPhone and iPod) also stores crash reports on your local machine after a sync with a device that have encountered a crash. Crash reports is stored in both user and system level directories. Clearing log with the everyone option includes the current user log files.

Reports:

Clear CrashReporter logs
User: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter
Everyone:
/Library/Logs/CrashReporter
/private/var/root/Library/Logs/CrashReporter

Clear Apple mobile devices CrashReporter logs
User: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*
Everyone:
/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*
/private/var/root/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*

Clear HangReporter logs
Everyone: Library/Logs/HangReporter

Online information

Data logging by Wikipedia.