Script to pull all lines with todays date

andycol500 · 07-02-2012, 03:49 AM

Hi Guys

Any ideas how I can script it to find todays date and then pull all lines out of /var/log/secure with todays date then > into a file.

cat /var/log/secure | grep "date +"%b %d""
Doesnt seem to work

Any ideas

whizje · 07-02-2012, 04:15 AM

Could you post how the date is specified in the log file.

rosehosting.com · 07-02-2012, 04:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andycol500

Hi Guys

Any ideas how I can script it to find todays date and then pull all lines out of /var/log/secure with todays date then > into a file.

cat /var/log/secure | grep "date +"%b %d""
Doesnt seem to work

Any ideas

A quick and dirty hack would be something like this:

Code:

MONTH=$(date +%b)
DAY=$(date +%d)
DAY=${DAY#0}

grep "${MONTH}  ${DAY}" /var/log/secure

since the log file format is like the following:

Code:

Jul  1 10:26:14
Jul  2 10:26:13

hope that helps

EDIT: as a side note, you have a useless use of `cat` there. `grep` is able to handle a file as an argument so you do not need to `cat`-it and then grep through the lines returned by `cat`.

andycol500 · 07-02-2012, 05:06 AM

Thanks and if I want to make it for one day ago
what would I change?

rosehosting.com · 07-02-2012, 05:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andycol500

Thanks and if I want to make it for one day ago
what would I change?

Code:

DAY=$(date +%d --date="yesterday")

that will give you the date of yesterday.