Reading contents of binary log files in /var/log

[Josh Grosse]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 02:42:05AM +0530, Siju George wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I find that the following files in /var/log namely
> 
> failedlogin
> lastlog
> pflog
> wtmp
> 
> does not give sensible output using "cat"
> 
> Could someone please tell me how to get meaningful data out of these log files?

These are binary files.  I'm going to recommend you use the man pages for
each.   Different programs are used to read the data, for different 
purposes.  e.g.:

    man -k pflog

That should get you started.