My Ubuntu box restarted without warning, what log files do I need to examine?
My Ubuntu box restarted without warning, what log files do I need to examine? Specifically,, (1) which log files will tell me what forced a sudden restart? And (2) where do I find them?
Update: Following waltinator's answer I ran sudo journalctl -b -1 -e
and spotted:
smartd[1310]: Device: /dev/sda [SAT], SMART Usage Attribute: 194 Temperature_Celsius changed from 108 to 109
I suspect I have a thermal problem.
Also did this:
[ me ]:/var/log$ ls -al /var/crash
total 4936
drwxrwsrwt 2 root whoopsie 4096 Jul 30 07:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root 4096 Jun 5 2017 ..
-rw-r----- 1 [ me ] whoopsie 4537678 Jul 24 12:50 _usr_bin_simple-scan.1000.crash
-rw-r--r-- 1 [ me ] whoopsie 0 Jul 24 10:34 _usr_bin_simple-scan.1000.upload
-rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 37 Jul 24 10:34 _usr_bin_simple-scan.1000.uploaded
-rw-r----- 1 root whoopsie 498295 Jul 24 10:57 _usr_sbin_ippusbxd.0.crash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root whoopsie 0 Jul 24 10:53 _usr_sbin_ippusbxd.0.upload
-rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 37 Jul 24 10:53 _usr_sbin_ippusbxd.0.uploaded
After a "sudden shutdown", aka "system crash", and reboot, the terminal command sudo journalctl -b -1 -e
will show you the end of the previous boot's log's. If there is no hint there, suspect power/ overheating.
Read man journalctl
to see how to extract information from the logs.
You can find how I make use of journalctl
easier at https://askubuntu.com/users/25618/waltinator
.