What logs should I be looking at? How do I interpret the messages within these?

LOG.VOYAGER

You will want to look out for the words, WARNING, ERROR, FAILURE, etc. in this log.

log.voyager will usually have alot of warnings" on a daily basis, related to failed searches and other minor details you usually don't need to be concerned about. (On the contrary, /var/adm/messages will have messages logged on a much lesser basis, and ERROR messages here almost always demand closer attention.)

There's no way to define in and of itself, which message is crucial and which one isn't. All sorts of stuff is in there, and under normal circumstances none of it is crucial. It tells what has been going on when, which helps paint a picture of what was going on from the servers' perspective at any given time.

The file is for troubleshooting and is not useful for preventative monitoring. If you have a problem, report it, and Support will look at log.voyager if necessary.

/VAR/ADM/MESSAGES

This log tracks hardware-related errors, like scsi failures, full disk-space, and the like.

If Voyager is completely down, this is the first place you want to look. Call Support immediately if you observe any peculiar messages here. Error messages here demand immediate attention.

ALERT_LIBR.LOG

The third log file to be concerned about is alert_LIBR.log. This tracks Oracle errors. To get to this log, do the following as oracle user:

cd $ORA_LOG

more alert_LIBR.log

Again, look for the following words in these logs: ERROR, WARNING, FAILURE, etc.
It will take "practice" in figuring out which error messages are important and which ones are not."

• Article last edited: 06-Mar-2015