Not a direct solution but I would enable some debugging to see what's happening behind the scenes.
Idea #1 - Debugging logger
For starters when you run your logger
commands you can do them like so, echoing out messages to STDERR.
$ logger -s "hi"
saml: hi
Idea #2 - validate your configuration file
You can also try validating your rsyslog configuration file:
$ sudo rsyslogd -N6 | head -10
rsyslogd: version 7.2.6, config validation run (level 6), master config /etc/rsyslog.conf
rsyslogd: End of config validation run. Bye.
6921.173842409:7f8b11df2780: rsyslogd 7.2.6 startup, module path '', cwd:/root
6921.175241008:7f8b11df2780: caller requested object 'net', not found (iRet -3003)
6921.175261977:7f8b11df2780: Requested to load module 'lmnet'
6921.175272711:7f8b11df2780: loading module '/lib64/rsyslog/lmnet.so'
6921.175505384:7f8b11df2780: module lmnet of type 2 being loaded (keepType=0).
6921.175520208:7f8b11df2780: entry point 'isCompatibleWithFeature' not present in module
6921.175528413:7f8b11df2780: entry point 'setModCnf' not present in module
6921.175535294:7f8b11df2780: entry point 'getModCnfName' not present in module
6921.175541502:7f8b11df2780: entry point 'beginCnfLoad' not present in module
Idea #3 - Turn up rsyslogd debugging
Also I'd try enabling debugging of the rsyslogd
daemon for further insight.
$ sudo -i
$ export RSYSLOG_DEBUGLOG="/tmp/debuglog"
$ export RSYSLOG_DEBUG="Debug"
$ service rsyslog stop
$ rsyslogd -d | head -10
7160.005597645:7fae096a3780: rsyslogd 7.2.6 startup, module path '', cwd:/root
7160.005872662:7fae096a3780: caller requested object 'net', not found (iRet -3003)
7160.005895004:7fae096a3780: Requested to load module 'lmnet'
7160.005906331:7fae096a3780: loading module '/lib64/rsyslog/lmnet.so'
7160.006023505:7fae096a3780: module lmnet of type 2 being loaded (keepType=0).
7160.006030872:7fae096a3780: entry point 'isCompatibleWithFeature' not present in module
7160.006033780:7fae096a3780: entry point 'setModCnf' not present in module
7160.006036209:7fae096a3780: entry point 'getModCnfName' not present in module
7160.006038359:7fae096a3780: entry point 'beginCnfLoad' not present in module
...
...
7160.006063913:7fae096a3780: rsyslog runtime initialized, version 7.2.6, current users 1
7160.006102179:7fae096a3780: source file syslogd.c requested reference for module 'lmnet', reference count now 2
7160.006113657:7fae096a3780: GenerateLocalHostName uses 'greeneggs'
Confirming version info
$ rsyslogd -version
rsyslogd 7.2.6, compiled with:
FEATURE_REGEXP: Yes
FEATURE_LARGEFILE: No
GSSAPI Kerberos 5 support: Yes
FEATURE_DEBUG (debug build, slow code): No
32bit Atomic operations supported: Yes
64bit Atomic operations supported: Yes
Runtime Instrumentation (slow code): No
uuid support: Yes
See http://www.rsyslog.com for more information.
Confirmed bug and a workaround
The OP submitted this as a bug to Red Hat.
The bug was characterized as follows:
Sure enough when I set the host's own time the VM had the same wrong time as the host. That's when I noticed /var/log/messages was no longer being updated.
It turns out nothing other than restarting the rsyslog service itself logs to files at that point. If I do so this gets logged:
---
Apr 15 16:39:39 rhel7time-dev rsyslogd-3000: sd_journal_get_cursor() failed: 'Cannot assign requested address'
Apr 15 16:39:39 rhel7time-dev rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="7.4.2" x-pid="574" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15.
Apr 15 16:39:39 rhel7time-dev rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="7.4.2" x-pid="2117" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] start
---
Otherwise nothing is logged to file, including logger.
If I comment out $OmitLocalLogging on in rsyslog.conf then file logging resumes (notice that until that point I hadn't changed rsyslog.conf).
Logging through journal is unaffected by all this. journalctl -b shows logging, including anything sent by logger.
To which the one of the developers responded:
When this issue occurs, you can delete /var/lib/rsyslog/imjournal.state
and restart the daemon as a workaround.
rsyslog doesn't handle the date directly but only through the systemd API.
I've checked the code in imjournal a while ago and this looks like an issue in systemd.
For reference, see: https://github.com/rsyslog/rsyslog/issues/43
/etc/rsyslog.conf
and the/etc/rsyslog.d
directories. It sounds like you don't have anything configured to be routed to a particular log file. You might also try specifying a syslog message withEMERG
priority to see if that gets through. Example:logger -p EMERG not really an emergency
systemd
(which RHEL7 migrated to, IIRC) Can you checkjournalctl -b
to see if your logs are going to the systemd journal?