# Message Log

The message log lets you see status information about a running Tor process. Each message has a severity associated with it, ranging from Error (most serious) to Debug (most verbose). See the help section on message severities for more information.

### Message Severities

A message's severity tells you how important the message is. A higher severity message usually indicates that something has gone wrong with Tor. Lower severity messages appear frequently during normal Tor operations and usually do not need to be logged.

The possible message severities, from most severe to least severe, are:

- Error: Messages that appear when something has gone very wrong and Tor cannot proceed. These messages will be highlighted in red in the message log.
- Warning: Messages that only appear when something has gone wrong with Tor, but are not fatal and Tor will continue running. These messages will be highlighted in yellow.
- Notice: Messages that appear infrequently during normal Tor operation and are not considered errors, but you still may care about.
- Info: Messages that appear frequently during normal Tor operation and are not usually of interest to most users.
- Debug: Extremely verbose messages that are primarily of interest to developers. You should generally not log debug messages unless you know what you are doing.

Most users should only log Error, Warning, and Notice messages.

To select which message severities you would like to see, do the following:

1. Open the message log from the Vidalia tray menu.
2. Click on Settings at the top of the message log window.
3. Check message severities you would like to see from the Message Filter group on the left and uncheck message severities you would like to hide.
4. Click Save Settings to apply your new message filter.

### Logging to a File

Vidalia can also write log messages to a file, as well as logging them in the message log window. To enable logging to a file, follow these steps:

1. Open the message log from the Vidalia tray menu.
2. Click on Settings at the top of the message log window.
3. Check the box labeled Automatically save new log messages to a file.
4. If you would like to change the file to which messages will be written, either type the path and filename into the text box, or click Browse to navigate to a location for your log file.
5. Click Save Settings to save your log destination.