Fedora Account System
Red Hat Associate
Red Hat Customer
Description of problem: When installing Logcheck as a package, the installation does not provide a program that will run Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):logcheck 1.3.14 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install a base gnome version of Fedora 20 2. yum -y install logcheck 3. either A: open a terminal and run the command logcheck and the error will appear or B: Configure logcheck to send mail to a mail account and run logcheck. In the email file you will find: Actual results: Warning: If you are seeing this message, your log files may not have been checked! Details: Could not run logtail or save output Check temporary directory: /tmp/logcheck.R1lWkA Also verify that the logcheck user can read all files referenced in /etc/logcheck/logcheck.logfiles! declare -x HOME="/var/lib/logcheck" declare -x LANG="en_AU.UTF-8" declare -x LOGNAME="logcheck" declare -x MAILTO="root" declare -x OLDPWD declare -x PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin" declare -x PWD="/var/lib/logcheck" declare -x SHELL="/bin/sh" declare -x SHLVL="2" declare -x USER="logcheck" declare -x XDG_RUNTIME_DIR="/run/user/989" declare -x XDG_SESSION_ID="140" Expected results: Logcheck runs correctly and send you a file with the errors that the system is configured to report. This should be regardless of the logging system being used. Additional info: A check of the logfiles shows that the default installation for logcheck does not modify the groups for the /var/log/messages and /var/log/secure files to include the user or group logcheck. ls -la shows the following permissions: $ls -la /var/log total 8056 drwxr-xr-x. 18 root root 4096 Feb 4 18:53 . drwxr-xr-x. 21 root root 4096 Feb 3 19:39 .. drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 16:07 anaconda drwxr-x---. 2 root root 4096 Jan 16 21:32 audit -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 0 Feb 4 18:53 boot.log -rw-------. 1 root utmp 1920 Feb 2 22:35 btmp -rw-------. 1 root utmp 3072 Jan 28 21:08 btmp-20140201 drwxr-xr-x. 2 chrony chrony 4096 Aug 9 18:33 chrony drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Sep 16 19:05 cluster -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 45711 Feb 6 19:02 cron -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 9534 Jan 26 03:37 cron-20140126 -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 87062 Feb 3 07:29 cron-20140203 drwxr-xr-x. 2 lp sys 4096 Feb 3 07:29 cups drwx--x--x. 2 root gdm 4096 Feb 3 19:39 gdm drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jan 3 22:10 glusterfs -rw-------. 1 root root 1212 Jan 25 18:27 grubby drwxr-sr-x+ 3 root systemd-journal 4096 Jan 25 16:41 journal -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 292292 Feb 6 19:06 lastlog drwx------. 6 root root 4096 Jan 21 07:59 libvirt -rw-------. 1 root root 53987 Feb 6 19:26 maillog -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Jan 25 15:59 maillog-20140126 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Jan 26 03:37 maillog-20140203 -rw-------. 1 root root 750535 Feb 6 19:29 messages -rw-------. 1 root root 875874 Jan 26 03:01 messages-20140126 -rw-------. 1 root root 6033470 Feb 3 07:28 messages-20140203 drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Jan 25 15:45 pluto drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Aug 1 2013 ppp drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 17:29 prelink -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1040 Dec 6 07:52 README drwx------. 3 root root 4096 Dec 11 01:56 samba -rw-------. 1 root root 12215 Feb 6 19:06 secure -rw-------. 1 root root 20643 Jan 25 21:01 secure-20140126 -rw-------. 1 root root 21952 Feb 3 07:01 secure-20140203 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Aug 13 13:11 speech-dispatcher -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 2876 Feb 3 19:39 spice-vdagent.log -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Feb 3 07:29 spooler -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Jan 25 15:59 spooler-20140126 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Jan 26 03:37 spooler-20140203 drwxr-x---. 2 root root 4096 Dec 20 05:11 sssd -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Jan 25 15:41 tallylog drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Aug 4 2013 vbox -rw-rw-r--. 1 root utmp 42624 Feb 6 19:06 wtmp -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 19458 Feb 3 19:39 Xorg.0.log -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 19457 Feb 3 06:05 Xorg.0.log.old -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 6792 Jan 25 20:12 Xorg.1.log -rw-------. 1 root root 29742 Feb 4 06:02 yum.log Those are the only two files the default configuration reads. Both of these files don't have permissions to be read by logcheck. In addition, with the migration to systemd journal, how useful is logcheck? The first part of the problem could be solved by adding logwatch to the root group (not really a good idea). The other alternative is to chown the log and secure files to root.wheel and add logwatch to the wheel group. second alternative is to chown root.logwatch to the files and chmod 640 to the two files. The third alternate is to chmod the files to 604. At this point I have done neither. The selinux permissions have not been checked either. This is very similar to a bug I reported in Fedora 16 (worked ok in 17 and I have just upgraded).
Sadly, the situation has not changed. Those logfiles are not owned by any package, so I can not file a bug against that package to change ownership of those packages. logcheck is useful, when you want to get emails from your system about unusual events. I see, that the situation is not as good as it could or should be, but sadly, there's nothing I could do about this. chown root:adm var/log/messages and chmod 640 will still solve this. logcheck is part of adm group. You'd still need to add create 0640 root adm to /etc/logrotate.d/syslog
*** Bug 1120828 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***