How to check system/application logs in linux.

It's very essential to know where system logs are stored. In case any system/application failure system logs play an important role in knowing exactly what went wrong. The system logs in linux are stored inside /var/log/messages.

Mail logs are stored under /var/log/maillog.

Many third party applications also store respective logs inside /var/log but it depends upon their default log settings which can be changed as per needs.

For e.g. apache, the web server when installed stores its log inside /var/log/httpd.