Syslog

You can use the syslog messaging feature of the Passport switch to manage switch event messages on any UNIX-based management platform. The Passport syslog software supports this functionality by communicating with a counterpart software component named syslog on your management workstation. The UNIX daemon syslogd is a software component that receives and locally logs, displays, prints, and/or forwards messages that originate from sources internal and external to the workstation. For example, syslogd on a UNIX workstation concurrently handles messages received from applications running on the workstation, as well as messages received from Passport routing switches running in a network accessible to the workstation.

At a remote UNIX management workstation, syslog does the following:

• Receives syslog messages from the Passport routing switch
• Examines the severity code in each message
• Uses the severity code to determine appropriate system handling for each message
• Based on the severity code in each message, dispatches each message to any or all of the following destinations:
­ Workstation display
­ Local log file
­ Designated printer
­ One or more remote hosts

Internally the Passport switch has four severity levels for log messages:

• Info
• Warning
• Error
• Fatal

The syslog feature supports eight different severity levels:

• Debug
• Info
• Notice
• Warning
• Error
• Critical
• Alert
• Emergency

The table below shows the default mapping of internal severity levels to syslog severity levels.