how do I view mail logs?

[kazar]

I'm not only a recent arrival to Plesk but also a complete Linux noob so please be gentle ...

I have stopped receiving email alerts and newsletters from a news service I subscribe to. They say the mail is being sent out on their end. AFAIK I am not killing their mail with spamassassin.

I wonder if there is something like a log of all mail that comes into the server, so perhaps I can figure out where exactly their emails are evaporating to, or can inform them if their messages are in fact never reaching my server.

I'm hoping for access via the Plesk UI but if I need to ssh to the server I'll go that route too, I just need very explicit instructions re where to look and how to view the contents of a file via ssh.

As an aside, I really wish I could access the root level of my server via ftp but so far have only figured out how to access domain roots via ftp. Is there a way to view all server directories via ftp? That way I could DL logs to view with a text editor.

Thanks in advance for help,

kazar

 

[servertune]

Originally posted by kazar
I wonder if there is something like a log of all mail that comes into the server

SSH to the server and run the following command to view the log files:
tail -f /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog
OR
less /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

Is there a way to view all server directories via ftp? That way I could DL logs to view with a text editor.

If you are not comfortable with commands and the prompt, you can use Filezilla: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

 

[kazar]

thank you very much, servertune

I don't know that using ssh will help me because I expect the mail logs to be huge and would really like to be able to use my familiar old text editor (BBEdit on Mac) to search for strings I need to find within them.

your two suggested commands were very helpful because at least you got me to look them up and start taking my bash baby steps

So I've decided I would like to DL the log file(s) via ftp. Once again, if I try logging into my server via ftp using the same "root" user and pw that I use to ssh into it, I don't get anywhere. I already have an ftp client (Interarchy) that I"m very happy with. I know there is already an ftp server running on my VPS because I can connect to a domain root as a domain user. I looked at the link for Filezilla and it appears that is an ftp server and client, so would I need it for some reason I'm not seeing?

I'm thinking there must be something somewhere in the Plesk Server Admin UI that will enable me to ftp in as root?

thanks again!

 

[kazar]

just to answer my own question, because i finally figured this out ... just in case anyone else searched on "ftp" who has the same question:

to connect via ftp client at the root level you must use the *sftp* protocol -- i.e., sftp://root@[serveripaddress]