This is not a post about how to setup syslog, if it is your objective then click one of the links below. This post instead gives you a checklist to help you fix common issues you may encounter while setting up your syslog server and clients.
1. First Make sure that there are no firewalls blocking the connection from the syslog server to the syslog client 2. Make sure that the computers are on the same network 3. Make sure that the syslog daemon is using the right config file for the syslog clients. Some systems use syslog.conf others use rsyslog.conf. Also some system have both config files and syslogd only uses one of them. Trust me I found that out the hard way. 4. Make sure that you restart the syslog servers after making changes to the config files
http://www.aboutdebian.com/syslog.htm