VMkernel logs missing

[MihirP]

Hello,

I want to know what to doe if ESXi hosts are missing VMKernel logs.

In one of my host when I did cd var/logs and ls-l, there was no VMKernal log file.

Please suggest.

Thanks,

Mihir

[john23]

Just do..

in /var/log directory..

touch vmkernel.log

and perform some operation and check

tail -f /var/log/vmkernel

-A

[julienvarela]

Hi,

Try to check if your logs are in /var/run/log

regards,

Julien

[zXi_Gamer]

If you are using ESXi4.0, then you cannot find vmkernel log fiel. Having said that, if you are running ESXi5.0, can you make sure that your scratch partition is set properly and no alerts are seen in the home page of Vsphere client of the ESXi

[MihirP]

Yes host is ESXi 4.1.0. So where in this version vmkernel log files can be found?

[zXi_Gamer]

Nope,.. you can only see /var/log/messages which will include entire logs of all process. But if you want to "see" only vmkernel logs, then you can press Alt+F12 in the DCUI console to see vmkernel logs.

[MihirP]

Thanks, found the "messages" log by ls-l

But here I can see messages.x.gz files also (where x is from 0 to 7)

Actually we received alert "Host is not responding" on 24th September 2013 at 11:00 PM EST. But above messages files shows just 25th september. I have attached the screenshot.

So how to check for 24th September

Also how to read this .gz files in SSH.

[zXi_Gamer · Accepted solution]

Usually in log rotation, the file containing a date will have all the logs before that time. So look for the file closer to 24th september 2013. Btw, you can use

zcat <filename.gz> | less or gunzip <Filename.gz> and do a cat on that file.

Do click on correct/helpful answers if you find so