[clug] rotating log files

[Michael Cohen]

Bob,
  logrotate has a prerotate/postrotate hook for putting in shell commands, you
  could easily rename the log file there. As little hint, dont use a time stamp
  with the : character in it (as you get for example from `date`) because
  although all unix filesystems do support any character in a file name (except
  /), all windows filesystems have weird limitations on characters in a
  filename and ':' is definitely not allowed. This was very puzzling to me the
  first time I tried to copy timestamped log files to a usb drive for example.

Michael.

On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 10:22:17AM +1100, Robert Edwards wrote:
> 
> Can anyone suggest to me why rotating log files would ever be
> considered a "Good Idea"?
> 
> Most distros come with a utility "logrotate" configured to
> rename a whole bunch of log files each day/week/month (configurable).
> 
> To me, a much better approach would be to date-stamp each of the
> log files each day/week/month (configurable) and not to rotate the
> file names.
> 
> Does such an alternative exist (before we write our own)? What should
> I search for?
> 
> Why do I care? Our backup server makes archive copies of each file
> that is deleted or modified. In the case of rotating log files, each
> log file gets archived each day/week/month as its name is changed.
> We really only need/want one copy of the log file in the archive.
> 
> Also, determining which log file is relevant for, say, last Tuesday
> means counting backwards in the case of rotating log files, but in
> the case of date-stamped log files, is simply a matter of looking in
> the file with the relevant date stamp (maybe the date stamp for the
> day after).
> 
> Just wondering out loud, before sitting down to some coding.
> 
> Bob Edwards.
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