Error and error localization under Linux

One of the most forbidding chapters in UNIX, as with computers in general, is error localization. However, often the difficulties arise simply from a lack of information—the various programs take different approaches to outputting error messages, and often a highly interesting message lands in a quiet grave in some file deep in the Linux directory tree. This need not be the case: in the following we describe the various log files and mechanisms as well as frequent errors and error messages.