---
title: "Debian set pound logfacility using rsyslog"
date: "2013-04-11"
path: "/128-debian-set-pound-logfacility-using-rsyslog.html"
section: "/ramblings"
aliases:
  - "/128"
  - "/128-debian-set-pound-logfacility-using-rsyslog"
  - "/128.html"
  - "/ramblings/128-debian-set-pound-logfacility-using-rsyslog.html"
---

Add in the `pound.cfg` the following:

```
LogFacility local1
LogLevel 3
```

Using webmin edit the syslog by adding:

![](/images/pound-config-logfile.PNG)

And also update the main syslog to remove local1 (or any available localN value) from being logged twice in the main syslog and also in the messages log:

![](/images/pound-config-logfile-syslog.PNG)

This creates the following but I found I needed to rearrange the order for the pound messages to show up in the log file I created:

```
local1.*                        /var/log/pound.log
auth,authpriv.*                 /var/log/auth.log
*.*;auth,authpriv,local1.none        -/var/log/syslog
#cron.*                         /var/log/cron.log
daemon.*                        -/var/log/daemon.log
kern.*                          -/var/log/kern.log
lpr.*                           -/var/log/lpr.log
mail.*                          -/var/log/mail.log
user.*                          -/var/log/user.log

#.... and further down the page
mail,news,local1.none   -/var/log/messages
```

To make this active on the current system you will need to restart `rsyslog` using:

```
root@server:~# /etc/init.d/rsyslog reload
Reloading enhanced syslogd: rsyslogd.
```

Is is then highly recommended that you setup log rotation for the new log file, especially depending on the `LogLevel` defined - this would generate apache sized log files after a few hours on a production server. We often leave it at level 3 until the site is ready to go live, then take it down to 1 or 0.

![](/images/pound-config-logfile-rotate.png)

<div class="box-info">
Despite being set at 0, you are likely to see a lot of read timeouts and connetion errors as often browsers terminate their sessions without completing their previous requests. For example, when a user is impatient and they click the refresh button before the page has been fully delivered, OR even double clicking on a link/button on a form.
</div>