If you, like me, have read the various docs and FAQs on how to enable remote SysLog on Ubuntu (I’m using v7.04 in this case), then it’s possible, like me, that you’ll end up banging your head off a brick wall.

All the docs suggest adding the standard “-r” flag to the SYSLOGD variable in /etc/init.d/sysklogd. However you’ll see further down in that file that it loads defaults from another file, /etc/default/syslogd , which just sets the same variable you’re just after modifying to be empty.

So, if -r doesn’t enable remote logging, then just check that -r is in your /etc/default/syslogd file!