How can I log to a specific file in linux using logger command?

Question

I will run the following script:

#!/bin/bash
./myprogram

#get exit code
exitvalue=$?

#log exit code value to /var/log/messages
logger -s "exit code of my program is " $exitvalue

But I don't want log message to be written in /var/log/messages because I don't have root privileges. Instead I want it to be written to a file in my home directory: /home/myuser/mylog

How should I modify logger command above?

Answer 1

I don't think you really need to (or want to) involve logger/syslog for this. Simply replace the last line of the script with:

echo "Exit code of my program is $exitvalue" >> /some/file/that/you/can/write/to

Answer 2

If you want to use logger so that the message appears both in the system logs and in some file of yours, you might do

  logger -s your message 2> $HOME/somefile

since the -s option to logger also outputs on stderr which is redirected to the file with 2>

You could want to use 2>> $HOME/somefile to append (not overwrite) your $HOME/somefile (read about bash redirections), and (see logger(1) for details) you may prefer to pass the program option --id=$$ to logger.