It seems rsyslogd stopped writing to /var/log/syslog on my laptop two days ago, and I do't know why.

This is visible in the following:

clh@avignon:/var/log$ ls -lt | head -30

total 12600

drwxr-xr-x 2 root              root    4096 Jan 30 09:53 upstart

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root  223836 Jan 30 09:37 dpkg.log

-rw-rw-r-- 1 root              utmp  361728 Jan 30 09:20 wtmp

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root   31376 Jan 30 09:19 Xorg.0.log

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root  262055 Jan 30 09:19 pm-powersave.log

drwxr-xr-x 2 root              root    4096 Jan 30 09:19 lightdm

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root    3177 Jan 30 09:18 boot.log

-rw-r----- 1 root              adm    60332 Jan 30 09:18 dmesg

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root  334169 Jan 30 09:18 udev

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root   32014 Jan 30 09:16 Xorg.0.log.old

-rw-r----- 1 root              adm    60381 Jan 30 09:07 dmesg.0

drwxr-xr-x 2 root              root    4096 Jan 30 07:54 cups

-rw-r----- 1 messagebus        adm        0 Jan 29 06:39 syslog

-rw-r----- 1 root              adm    16101 Jan 29 06:30 dmesg.1.gz

-rw-r----- 1 messagebus        adm   186869 Jan 28 20:57 kern.log

-rw-r----- 1 messagebus        adm   147391 Jan 28 20:57 syslog.1

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root    4524 Jan 28 20:33 alternatives.log

-rw-rw-r-- 1 root              utmp 8760000 Jan 28 20:32 lastlog

-rw-r--r-- 1 root              root  960000 Jan 28 20:32 faillog

-rw-r----- 1 root              adm    16029 Jan 28 14:25 dmesg.2.gz

-rw-r----- 1 messagebus        adm    21598 Jan 28 07:31 syslog.2.gz

-rw-r----- 1 root              adm    15926 Jan 28 06:59 dmesg.3.gz

-rw-r----- 1 messagebus        adm    19983 Jan 27 07:55 syslog.3.gz

The last few lines of syslog.1 are:

Jan 28 20:55:30 avignon pulseaudio[7825]: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.

Jan 28 20:55:42 avignon goa[8118]: goa-daemon version 3.6.0 starting [main.c:112, main()]

Jan 28 20:55:46 avignon signond[8250]: signondaemon.cpp 345 init Failed to SUID root. Secure storage will not be available. 

Jan 28 20:57:42 avignon gnome-session[7875]: CRITICAL: gsm_manager_set_phase: assertion `GSM_IS_MANAGER (manager)' failed

Jan 28 20:57:42 avignon gnome-session[7875]: Gtk-CRITICAL: gtk_main_quit: assertion `main_loops != NULL' failed

Jan 28 20:57:42 avignon kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.

Jan 28 20:57:42 avignon rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="5.8.6" x-pid="1090" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] exiting on signal 15.

The last few lines of kern.log are:

Jan 28 20:10:44 avignon kernel: [20707.335160] psmouse serio2: Touchpad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 6

Jan 28 20:10:44 avignon kernel: [20707.369217] psmouse serio2: Touchpad at isa0060/serio2/input0 - driver resynced.

Jan 28 20:57:42 avignon kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.

The first few lines of /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf are

#

auth,authpriv.*                 /var/log/auth.log

*.*;auth,authpriv.none          -/var/log/syslog

#cron.*                         /var/log/cron.log

#daemon.*                       -/var/log/daemon.log

kern.*                          -/var/log/kern.log

#lpr.*                          -/var/log/lpr.log

mail.*                          -/var/log/mail.log

#user.*                         -/var/log/user.log

The date of the above configuration file is 30 March 2012.

The only two things I can think of is that some update somewhere has fragged my logging, or perhaps because I am trying out Gnome Shell (started at about the same time logging stopped) that I have "done something".

Any help greatly appreciated!