Correlating log messages to get a deeper insight about the actual events happening on a network or server is an important element of IT security. Being able to do so is mandated by several security ...
Operating systems, applications, and network devices generate text messages of the events that happen to them: a user logs in, a file is created, a network connection is opened to a remote host, etc.
A centralized syslog server was one of the first true SysAdmin tasks that I was given as a Linux Administrator way back in 1997. My boss at the time wanted to pull in log files from various appliances ...