Puppet writes logging by default to syslog. Why is that? Most software write to some separate logfile. I checked the documentation and there is a mention that you can write to a log file but there was a mention that "This is generally not used." Is it a bad idea?
What is the typical setup for following the puppet logging? Using grep on the /var/log/messages file?
We are using puppet-dashboard for this purpose. It will give you a good overview on the environment, what is failing and what is working. And which servers have stopped checking in.
Its easy to setup, checkout http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/related-projects/dashboard/
If you want to log to a different file, you can use the syslogfacility configuration option in puppet ( http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/stable/configuration.html#syslogfacility ), and configure syslog to log it to a different file.