How to clear all kinds of Logs under Debian
 

Hi,

What is the easiest way to clear all the system logs so that it just looks like a fresh system. I have created a customized image of a debian install on my workstation which I would like to install on numerous identical system. So when the user starts using it, they should just see the logs as if the installed system is fresh. Does any one have scripts like that?

thanks

Anyone?????

It's probably not the answer you're looking for :) but I don't let my users have access to the system logs. Those are for root only...

Thanks for the kind help.

I haven't got a clue, but this might be a start. :scratch:

If you use the logrotate utility then the log files will clear themselves over time.

this is the default contents of /var/log on a debian sarge.
All directories inside are empty

Hope it helps..

Thank you guys. Well this has definately given me a start.

cat /dev/null > /var/log/messages
cat /dev/null > /var/log/wtmp
cat /dev/null > /var/log/maillog
etc..

this will delete the contents of the file without removing the file itself or changing any of it's permissions. Repeat as necessary for each log file, write into a bash script whatever.. then delete all the numbered log files ( i.e. messages.1.tar.gz ) which are old logs that have been backed up from logrotate or a similar app.

Thanks.....:) This was what I was almost looking for.

after reading the suggestion given by the people I decided to write a script and I posted the following question:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=407115

But none of the suggestions worked for me. Neither the script(single find -type ...command) nor the logrotate. Everyone keeps referring to logrotate, but I still don;t get it. Does that mean that for every file in the /var/log directory we will have to write a rule in the logrorate.conf file? Wouldn't that be too much of work to write a rule for every single file. I might as well use the cat /dev/null >> <filename> as many number of time as the file under /var/log directory are.

I need some thoughtful suggestion.

Thanks

Not for every file, but for every log type. For example, I have 1 entry in /etc/logrotate.d for each of cups, samba, squid, syslog & vsftpd. Since you can create a new entry from an existing one with cp and edit from there, it's not that much work.

Thanks for the information. Actually, everynow and then I keep installing various packages, so if I use the logrotate, I would have to go and add entry everytime. A script which just clears out all the log file inside /var/log directory would be the optimum solution in my case.

Suggestions most welcome

exec logs clear from desktop
 

Easy bin file to clear any listed logs in the bin file
/root/Desktop/logclear.bin

COPY the below into your favorite txt editor save as logclear.bin set permissions to execute user root grp root pick a nice icon for it save to desktop
then click it pick RUN IN TERMINAL or from cammand line cd to roots desktop and execute it
[root@mail Desktop]# ./logclear.bin
[root@mail Desktop]#

cat /dev/null > /var/log/messages
cat /dev/null > /var/log/openwebmail.log
cat /dev/null > /var/log/maillog
cat /dev/null > /var/log/secure
cat /dev/null > /var/log/httpd/error_log
cat /dev/null > /var/log/httpd/ssl_error_log
cat /dev/null > /var/log/httpd/ssl_request_log
cat /dev/null > /var/log/httpd/ssl_access_log

Enjoy

You can remove all logs file using script on command line

for logs in `find /var/log -type f`; do > $logs; done

or save this in to some file like zerolog.sh and

chmod +x zerolog.sh

execute the script

./zerolog.sh