Why is syslog not logging where I tell it to log? I've configured syslogd like so:

*.debug /var/log/messages


I want pretty much everything logged in /var/log/messages. 

When I run

syslog -s hello


I get the message showing up in /var/log/message.

I tried restarting syslog using

launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
ps -x | grep [s]yslog


to check that syslog is not running, then

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist


to restart.

I checked /etc/syslog.conf to make sure it doesn't change, and it doesn't. Still I get messages logged to /var/log/message.

Is there another place to set this?
I can confirm the following worked on my Mac running 10.6.7:

I added the following line to /etc/syslog.conf (where &lt;tab&gt; is a tab character):

*.debug&lt;tab&gt;/var/log/messages


I HUP'd the syslogd process using sudo kill -HUP &lt;syslogd pid&gt;.

And tested it with logger -p debug test_msg and syslog -s hello.

syslog created /var/log/messages on the fly as I used the logger and syslog commands.

The man page for syslog.conf(5) specifies the use of tabs between the fields.  However, I tried using a single space instead and that worked as well.  Based on the man pages for syslog and syslogd, /etc/syslog.conf appears to be the only configuration file you need to worry about.