Automatically "recreate" mail.log on reboot ?

[Stuart Abramson_2]

You know how a reboot moves /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log to "OLDsyslog.log" and creates a new "syslog.log"?

Can I set something up to do the same thing for "mail.log"?: move mail.log to OLDmail.log and create a new mail.log?

Is there some flag to do that?

Our "mail.log" files get so big that they become a problem. We don't trim them in cronjobs - what do you do?

[Stuart Abramson_2]

Please don't tell me how to clean up the mail.log. I know how to do that. I just want to know if I can set it up at reboot time, or should I do it in a cronjob...

[Michael Schulte zur Sur · Accepted solution]

Hi,

you find the procedure in:
/sbin/init.d/syslogd
You probably could do it, when the sendmail daemon is started.

Michael

[Jean-Luc Oudart]

The 1st solution implies it only happens when you reboot your server and therefore may not answer your mail.log size pb.

You may have to use cron
you can copy the file to different location (and gzip it)then reset with

> mail.log

Regards,
Jean-Luc

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi,

You'll have to add code to the /sbin/init.d/sendmail script - like


mv /var/adm/syslog/mail.log /var/adm/syslog/OLDmail.log

This is the way syslog startup does it.
NOTE: these scripts are fair game for overwrite on patch installs or upgrades.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

There isn't any script that will move mail.log file through startup. You can configure one that will do it for you. Make sure that script starts before syslogd script though by putting the links with lower number than syslogd in sbin/rc2.d directory.

-Sri

[Jeff Schussele]

Oops forgot to add you'll have to touch mail.log after the mv or as syslogd does it
> /var/adm/syslog/mail.log

Later,
Jeff

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

you will want to stop syslogd and then you can mv mail.log like syslog.log.

Michael

[Stuart Abramson_2]

It looks like the best place to put it is inside the "/sbin/init.d/syslogd" script, right after:

if [ -f /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log ]; then
mv /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log /var/adm/syslog/OLDsyslog.
log
mask=`umask`
umask 022
> /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
umask $mask
fi

But, as someone pointed out above, we reboot some servers every other weekend, but some servers we NEVER reboot. So, I'll probably do a cronjob.

Thanks for your help...

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

To clarify a bit more sendmail and syslogd (may not be bad) scripts isn't an excellent place to put the code in due to

1. It could be overwritten. swinstalls won't overwrite /sbin/init.d/ files. But you may yourself replace it with a new version later.
2. syslogd that holds locks on this file starts before sendmail.

So, it's better to write a seperate script that starts before syslogd in my 2 cents opinion.

-Sri