LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Rotating log files through shell script

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Rotating log files through shell script

Hello. I am running below command to capture ping response from a server:

ping server1 | perl -nle 'BEGIN {$|++} print scalar(localtime), " ", $_' > ping_response_server1 &

Now this generates a log file name ping_response_server1. I want this file to be rotated after reaching certain threshold size. For that i tried to create below shell script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash



MaxFileSize=500000



logfile=$1

if [ ! -f $logfile ]; then

  echo "log file not found $logfile"

  exit 1

fi



#Get size in bytes**

    file_size=`du -b $logfile | tr -s '\t' ' ' | cut -d' ' -f1`

    if [ $file_size -gt $MaxFileSize ];then

        timestamp=`date +%s`

        newlogfile=$logfile.$timestamp

        cp $logfile $newlogfile

        rm $logfile

        touch $logfile

    fi

In the argument of this script i pass the file name ping_response_server1. But when i run this script it doesn't work properly. It creates the new log file but the old one ie ping_response_server1 doesn't get updated any more and no responses gets captured in log anymore.

Any idea what is wrong with this concept?

Why not use logrotate?

Quote:

Originally Posted by keefaz (Post 5601869)

Why not use logrotate?

What ^ said!
Built for it, actually.

And not too difficult to use, generally it's already installed and set up, just add the wanted log in /etc/logrotate.conf

Code:

/path/to/logfile.log {

        size 500k

}

the old logfile is still opened and in use, the commands removed only the directory entry - and created another one.

Ok. I am going to use logrotate. To setup this i've created a file "ping" in /etc/logrotate.d as below:

Code:

/tmp/ping_response_server1

/tmp/ping_response_server2

/tmp/ping_response_server3

/tmp/ping_response_server4

{

size 20M

rotate 4

}

Now logrotate runs daily from /etc/cron.daily/logrotate. But if i want to run logrotate hourly i just copy this logrotate script from /etc/cron.daily/ to /etc/cron.hourly and delete it from /etc/cron.daily.

Is that approach correct?

You could remove the ping file from /etc/cron.hourly, put it on different path
eg: /home/antriksh/etc
Then add a crontab entry like

Code:

00 * * * * /usr/sbin/logrotate /home/antriksh/etc/ping

edit: sorry, misread your post :)

Yes your approach seems correct, leave the script in /etc/cron.hourly directory

Thank you everyone for the help. logrotate did the trick.

glad to hear that.
(if you really want to say thanks just click on yes)