Possible Duplicate:
Difference between /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/kern.log?
Both these files are present in ubuntu 10.04 yet they seem to contain different information. What's the difference between these two files?
Possible Duplicate:
Difference between /var/log/messages, /var/log/syslog, and /var/log/kern.log?
Both these files are present in ubuntu 10.04 yet they seem to contain different information. What's the difference between these two files?
It seems this has already been answered here.
/etc/syslog.conf defines the difference between the files. You can look at that file to see what logs where, and to change what logs where.
Differences of versions between 10.04 and 10.10
The /var/log/messages only exists until 10.10. This file contains more generic messages, while The /var/log/syslog is generated by the system logging daemon (syslogd).
I guess others also raised the question and so the /var/log/messages got removed.