Manage the logs of an application.

[Alpha977]

Hello to all!

An application on my server generate log files with a specific dimension, ex:

application_log1.txt 10Mb
application_log2.txt 10Mb
application_log3.txt 9Mb

When the dimension reach the limit it overwrite the files.

Now i need to tar the log, and i must to create a script to zip the log when reach the limit, ordered by date.

How i can do this?

Thank you!

Points for all reply.

[Ivan Krastev]

Write a script to check every 5 min if size of logs is reached 10Mb and after that perform actions: tar, rename, zip

Another options is to use logrotate mechanism: see how other logs are processed in /etc/logrotate.d/*

regards,
ivan

[Alpha977]

Thank you for your advice!

Can you give me an example of script?

Thank you!

[Ivan Ferreira]

You may need to do a command like this in your "rotation script" if you don't use logrotate:

tar zcvf application_log-$(date +%m-%d-%Y).tgz application_log*

[Alpha977]

Thank you Ivan.

I'm going to see how logrotate work.

How do you use logrotate in this case?

Thank you

[Court Campbell · Accepted solution]

cd /etc/logrotate.d

look at the files in that directory. usually you create a file named after the service/daemon that is creating the log files. Just mimic one of the files in that directory. man logrotate tells more about the options that can be put in the file. here is a sample:

/var/log/application_log?.txt {
rotate 5
weekly
size=10M
compress
postrotate /sbin/killall -HUP
endscript
}

Notice the ? above. You can use globs in choosing the file. Otherwise you create a list like this:

/var/log/application_log1.txt /var/log/application_log2.txt /var/log/application_log3.txt{
rotate 5
weekly
size=10M
compress
postrotate /sbin/killall -HUP
endscript
}

[Alpha977]

Thank to all for all reply!

This week i will try this last solution.

Bye!