LOGGER(1) General Commands Manual LOGGER(1)

logger — log messages

logger string ...

The logger utility saves a message, in an unspecified manner and format, containing the string operands provided by the user. The messages are expected to be evaluated later by personnel performing system administration tasks.

It is implementation-dependent whether messages written in locales other than the POSIX locale are effective.

None.

The following operand is supported:

string
One of the string arguments whose contents are concatenated together, in the order specified, separated by single space characters.

Not used.

None.

The following environment variables affect the execution of logger :

Provide a default value for the internationalisation variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the implementation-dependent default locale will be used. If any of the internationalisation variables contains an invalid setting, the utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalisation variables.
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single- as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error. (This means diagnostics from logger to the user or application, not diagnostic messages that the user is sending to the system administrator.)
Determine the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .

Default.

Not used.

Used only for diagnostic messages.

Unspecified.

None.

The following exit values are returned:

Successful completion.
An error occurred.

Default.

This utility allows logging of information for later use by a system administrator or programmer in determining why non-interactive utilities have failed. The locations of the saved messages, their format and retention period are all unspecified. There is no method for a portable application to read messages, once written.

A batch application, running non-interactively, tries to read a configuration file and fails; it may attempt to notify the system administrator with:

logger myname: unable to read file foo. [timestamp]

None.

mailx(1) , write(1) .

February 1997 posix.fail