Non-root access to system logs

 Access to some system logs in /var/log is restricted to root only. 

Here's a handy way to grant access read-only access to all system logs without all that mucking around with sudo and file permissions.

• Install bindfs from the EPEL repo.
• Create a group (eg: logs) and add all users to it who need logfile access
• Create a mountpoint for the read-only view of /var/log (eg: /log)
• Create a bind mount in /etc/fstab
• /var/log  /log  fuse.bindfs     ro,force-group=logs,perms=g+rD  0 0
• Mount /log

System logs can now be viewed in /log by any user who is a member of the logs group.

This works because bindfs forces group read access on all files in the bind mount