Why does Smarts write to the syslog facility (usually in /var)?

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:


Why does Smarts write to the syslog facility (usually in /var)?

What from Smarts gets logged to /var/adm/messages?
Some of the information written to a Smarts log file is also sent to the system logger.  On Solaris, by default, messages sent to the system logger end up in  /var/adm/messages (though this is configurable).

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Resolution

Every Smarts error message has an associated severity.  If you look at a message in the log file, you'll see something of the form  "CI-F-something".  The -F- is the severity - in this case, Fatal.  The possible values, from most to least severe are:
Fatal, Error, Warning, Normal, and Debug.

By default, errors of level Warning and above go to the log file, and those of level Error or above are sent to the system logger.  These defaults can be changed using the --errlevel and --loglevel startup options.
--errlevel sets the threshold for writing to the log
--loglevel sets the threshold for  writing to the system logging facility.

Either option can use a "level" of None to disable logging completely.