LinuxQuestions.org - Fundamental automated tasks

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Fundamental automated tasks

What are the fundamental automated tasks through crontab that a server has to do?

Self-maintenance

That would depend on what type of server it is. A mail server is going to need to do different things to a file server, a *ahem* CD server, etc, etc. One thing that should be done on all machines, servers or otherwise, is logrotate.

How to do that?
simply

0 3 * * * /sbin/logrotate /var/log/messages

Is that ok?

My crontab has the following entries:

Code:

SHELL=/bin/bash

PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

MAILTO=root

HOME=/



# run-parts

# Minute, hour, day-of-month, month, day-of-week 

*/15 * * * * root nice -19 /etc/cron.d/logperms.cron

01 * * * * root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.hourly

02 16 * * * root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.daily

22 17 * * 0 root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.weekly

42 18 1 * * root nice -n 19 run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

The command run-parts basically runs any scripts it find in the given directory. Under /etc/cron.daily I have a script called logrotate that contains

Code:

#!/bin/sh



/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf

The configuration file it uses contains

Code:

# see "man logrotate" for details

# rotate log files weekly

weekly



# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs

rotate 4



# create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones

create



# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed

compress



# RPM packages drop log rotation information into this directory

include /etc/logrotate.d



# no packages own lastlog or wtmp -- we'll rotate them here

/var/log/wtmp {

    monthly

    create 0664 root utmp

    rotate 1

}



/var/log/lastlog {

    monthly

    rotate 1

}



# system-specific logs may be configured here

So there you have it. That is how my logrotate works. The cron entry you have wouldn't work as the command logrotate requires a config file rather than pointing to a directory.

alright, and how logrotate finds where the log files reside?

In the logrotate.conf file it says that "RPM packages drop log rotation information into this director" and then lists /etc/logrotate.d. In that dir there are yet more files, each a config file corresponding to a service that generates logs that need to be rotated. Try saying that after a few beers :D

Basically, cron reads from the script that tells it to run logrotate. logrotate reads from the logrotate.conf file that tells it to look in /etc/logrotate.d to get information about which logs need rotating.

I doubt very much that /etc/logrotate.d is RPM specific, so it should work on any system.

Alright, i think that suse does logrotation automatically, doesn't it?