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One daemon you probably won't need to reconfigure
but should still be aware of is
klogd, Linux's
kernel log daemon. This daemon is
started automatically at boot time by the same script that starts the
general system logger (probably
/etc/init.d/syslogd or
/etc/init.d/sysklogd, depending on which Linux
distribution you use).
By default, klogd directs log messages from the
kernel to the system logger, which is why most people
don't need to worry about
klogd: you can control the handling of kernel
messages by editing the configuration file for
syslogd.
This is also true if you use Syslog-ng instead of syslog, but since
Syslog-ng accepts messages from a much wider variety of sources,
including /proc/kmsg (which is where
klogd receives its messages), some Syslog-ng
users prefer to disable klogd.
Don't do so yourself unless you first configure
Syslog-ng to use /proc/kmsg as a source.
klogd can be invoked as a standalone logger;
that is, it can send kernel messages directly to consoles or a log
file. In addition, if it isn't already running as a
daemon, klogd can be used to dump the contents
of the kernel log buffers (i.e., the most recent kernel messages) to
a file or to the screen. These applications of
klogd are especially useful to kernel
developers.
For most of us, it's enough to know that for normal
system operations, klogd can be safely left
alone (that is, left with default settings and startup
options — not disabled). Just remember that
when you use syslog in Linux, all kernel messages are handled by
klogd first.
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