Once upon a time I messed with FreeBSD rather frequently. Then
things changed. Time passed and I'm back to tinkering with
things a little, though mostly from the perspective of a Mac OS
X user. In that distant past, I found that rotating log files
in the classical manner - changing the number and dropping any
log needing another digit - did not preserve data that was
needed to work on some of the problems we were seeing. So, I
changed the way rotating was done to never delete the logs in
question, instead naming the archived file uniquely with a time
code. Here's an example of such a modification for Mac OS X
Jaguar (a bit out of date but I use it 24/7) to deal with its
equivalent of /var/log/messages. It's offered just to show the
nature of the results.
--
echo
echo -n Rotating log files:0
cd /var/log
for i in system.log; do
if [ -f ${i} ]; then
echo -n ${i}
if [ -x /usr/bin/gzip ]; then gzext=.gz; else gzext=; fi
if [ -f ${i}.6${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.6${gzext}
${i}.7${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.5${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.5${gzext}
${i}.6${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.4${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.4${gzext}
${i}.5${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.3${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.3${gzext}
${i}.4${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.2${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.2${gzext}
${i}.3${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.1${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.1${gzext}
${i}.2${gzext}; fi
if [ -f ${i}.0${gzext} ]; then mv -f ${i}.0${gzext}
${i}.1${gzext}; fi
# if [ -f ${i} ]; then mv -f ${i} ${i}.0 if [ -x
/usr/bin/gzip ]; then gzip -9 ${i}.0; fi; fi
# touch ${i} chmod 640 ${i} chown root:admin ${i}
# 23 Sep 2007 1342
# Modification to keep system.log files by date rather than rotating them
# NOTE: no provision for deleting the accumulation is provided
X=$(date|awk '{print 0$3$2$6}')
X=${i}.${X:0-9}
mv -f ${i} ${X}
touch ${i} chmod 640 ${i} chown root:admin ${i}
if [ -x /usr/bin/gzip ]; then gzip -9 ${X}; fi
fi
done
if [ -f /var/run/syslog.pid ]; then kill -HUP $(cat
/var/run/syslog.pid | head -1); fi
echo
--
Since I recently set up a PCBSD 1.4.1 machine to play with, I
see that log rotation is no longer done with scripts but
rather with newsyslog. If I read the man page correctly,
newsyslog rotates the log files in the good old way though it
seems to have a much more comprehensive approach as to when to
do it.
I've had no difficulties with the change made on my Mac OS X
Jaguar system - if it affects something, the something is
something I apparently don't do. So, all that preamble brings
me to my question. Are there things that modifying the archived
log data file names would interfere with?
--
Walter M. Pawley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Wump Research Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97470
541-672-8975
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