Making /var/log/messages readable

[rehmert at gmail.com]

On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 16:43 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 15:35 -0800, Forrest Sedgwick wrote:
> > Hello everyone, I have a security question.  I was wondering what the 
> > risks are in making /var/log/messages readable by everyone.  I am often 
> > checking this log and right now I need to su every time to do it.  I 
> > have not modified syslog.conf in anyway, so the entry for messages still 
> > reads:
> > 
> > *.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none                /var/log/messages
> > 
> > This is on my laptop, which is not used as any time of server or 
> > anything.  But since I'm a newbie I thought it would be a good idea to 
> > check before changing around these types of security settings...
> ----
> better idea - why not forward root's mail to your regular email account
> and that way you will receive daily logwatch instead of root?
> 

As a bit of a middle-ground - you could setup sudo without a password...
You could then check out the bottom of /var/log/messages via "$sudo
tail /var/log/messages"