Because a computer system may experience hundreds or thousands of events each second, it is important to distinguish which events require the immediate attention of a system administrator, which should be recorded as entries in the system's event log for later analysis, and which can be safely ignored. Event logs provide a centralized collection point for all kinds of error reports, system alerts, diagnostic messages, and status messages generated by a system. This book describes the characteristics of these messages, why they are important, and how you can access them and act upon them.
Event logs are particularly important to system security and problem troubleshooting.
For this audience, the book explains how to view and maintain the event logs via the system's Event Viewer and how to interpret the results. For programmers, event logging helps in diagnosing system or network problems. For security administrators, event logging is an important tool in auditing security-related events and tracking down the source of security breaches. The book comes with a CD-ROM containing examples from the book and many contributed event logging and auditing software packages. The Event Logging Service 3.