Main Help Page
Files

# Logs

Servers and OS X itself creates report and log files in system directories. These log files can be used to analyze, monitor or troubleshooting OS X. Cocktail provides different tools to help the workflow when working with reports and 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 24 system logs. There is also a possibility to open and view third party logs. These logs can however not be rotated. You can also use Cocktail to free up disk space by deleting rotated log files. OS X log files can be found in the system directory /private/var/log/ and /Library/Logs/.

Logs:

Account Policy
/private/var/log/accountpolicy.log
Authorization
/private/var/log/authd.log
Calendar
/private/var/log/module/com.apple.ical/calendar.log
Cloud Pairing
/private/var/log/cloudpaird.log
Commerce
/private/var/log/commerce.log
CoreDuet
/private/var/log/coreduetd.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
Display Policy
/private/var/log/displaypolicyd.log
Firewall
/private/var/log/alf.log
Fsck
/private/var/log/fsck_hfs.log
Install
/private/var/log/install.log
Kerberos Admin
/private/var/log/krb5kdc/kadmin.log
Kerberos Client
/private/var/log/krb5kdc/kdc.log
Open Directory
/private/var/log/opendirectoryd.log
Revision
/private/var/log/com.apple.revisiond/revisiond.log
Security
/private/var/log/secinitd.log
System
/private/var/log/system.log
Web Sharing Access
/private/var/log/apache2/access_log
Web Sharing Error
/private/var/log/apache2/error_log
WiFi
/private/var/log/wifi.log
Wireless
/private/var/log/wirelessproxd.log
XPC Activity
/private/var/log/module/com.apple.xpc.activity/xpc.activity.log

Crash and hang reports are created by OS X when either an application or the operating system encounters an error and must close. In addition to the local reports iTunes will also synchronise logs from Apple's iOS devices in case they have crashed. Crash and hang reports are used to debug problems and improve the overall stability of the system and are stored in both the user's and system's directories. Choosing to clear the logs with the everyone option includes the current user's log files.
In addition to this Cocktail can also clear the Apple System Logs which contains general and diagnostic system messages produced by OS X. These files can occasionally contain useful information for debugging problems with the operating system, however a new log file is created daily so the system logs can take up considerable disk space if they are not cleared regularly.

CrashReporter logs (.asl, .crash, .diag, .hang, .log, .panic, .ping, .shutdownStall, .spin files):
User: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter
Everyone: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter
Apple mobile devices CrashReporter logs (.crash, .log, .submitted files):
User: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*/Baseband
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*/Retired
Everyone: ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*/Baseband
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/*/Retired
Apple System logs and diagnostic messages (.asl, .crash, .diag, .hang, .log, .panic, .ping, .shutdownStall, .spin, .stat files):
User: ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
Everyone: /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
/private/var/log/asl
/private/var/log/com.apple.clouddocs.asl
/private/var/log/DiagnosticMessages
/private/var/log/performance
/private/var/log/powermanagement

Online information

- Computer data logging by Wikipedia.