Bug 30471
| Summary: | periodic script output to a file always appends | ||||||||
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| Product: | Base System | Reporter: | adrian <adrian> | ||||||
| Component: | bin | Assignee: | Brian Somers <brian> | ||||||
| Status: | Closed FIXED | ||||||||
| Severity: | Affects Only Me | ||||||||
| Priority: | Normal | ||||||||
| Version: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Hardware: | Any | ||||||||
| OS: | Any | ||||||||
| Attachments: |
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> >Number: 30471 > >Category: bin > >Synopsis: periodic script output to a file always appends Can the same functionality not be had by setting the _output variables as suggested in periodic.conf(5) ? newsyslog(8) then gives all the rotation and compression flexibility that people might want. -- Brian <brian@freebsd-services.com> <brian@Awfulhak.org> http://www.freebsd-services.com/ <brian@[uk.]FreeBSD.org> Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour ! <brian@[uk.]OpenBSD.org> Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->brian I'll look after this State Changed From-To: open->feedback Awaiting feedback from original submitter Sorry about the slow feedback. I hald composed this and let it sit for a few days due to my work load. :-( On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Brian Somers wrote: > > >Number: 30471 > > >Category: bin > > >Synopsis: periodic script output to a file always appends > > Can the same functionality not be had by setting the _output > variables as suggested in periodic.conf(5) ? newsyslog(8) then gives > all the rotation and compression flexibility that people might want. Not quite. newsyslog is very limited in its ability to rename files. Being able to have monthly logs named with their month as part of their names just isn't possible through just newsyslog. You can get pretty close though with the right options to newsyslog, but if you say keep 31 daily logs, who know which one will hold the log for the first of the month. 6 moths later the first might be in daily.15. My initial goal was to just have separate runs kept in separate logs for each log type and have it be obvious which day went into which file, so don't let my fancy use of $(date) in the *_output variables cloud the situation. It's just a nicety if you want to use something like '$(date +%b)'. Being able to maintain the logfiles and rotate them in a single place isn't such a bad thing IMHO. If you change the logfile names, you need to change newsyslog.conf as well. All in all it can be argued that we have 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, so I won't really press the issue. I'm still rolling the patch into a base-line appliance based off of FreeBSD because it's agreeable to me. Adrian -- [ adrian@ubergeeks.com ] State Changed From-To: feedback->closed I don't think that clobbering output files is the right way to go on this. Ultimately, the same functionality can be obtained by having a separate cron job that runs after daily/weekly/montly runs and ``handles'' the log file, truncating it after it's been handled. |
If any of the *_output variables are set to files in periodic.conf, they will always append to the file. This forces you to truncate the files through some external mechanism, which is cumbersome. It would be nice to have periodic know whether or not to preserve the old contents of the file by itself. Since periodic.conf is just shell code, it is easy to implement complex self maintaining sets of logs. Consider the following settings in periodic.conf: daily_output="/var/log/periodic/daily.$(date +%d)" daily_output_clobber="YES" daily_status_security_output="/var/log/periodic/security.$(date +%d)" daily_status_security_output_clobber="YES" weekly_output="/var/log/periodic/weekly.$(date +%U)" weekly_output_clobber="YES" monthly_output="/var/log/periodic/monthly.$(date +%m)" monthly_output_clobber="YES" These settings allow local archiving of the output with automatic reuse of the old log files. Dailies are kept for a month, weeklies and monthlies for a year. Note that this option opens the door to gzipping the output. To gzip, you must always clobber the old log file. Fix: Apply the attached patches to the default periodic.conf and periodic.sh. For historical compatability the default behavior is to append. How-To-Repeat: Set daily_output="/some/file" in periodic.conf and run 'periodic daily' a few times to see that it always appends.