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Re: Log rotation in Debian /var/log



%% Ilya Martynov <m_ilya@agava.com> writes:

  im> Just curious: What drawbacks?

I found two, but only one is really critical:

 1) You can use globbing to have a single stanza match multiple log
    files, BUT the entire stanza is run each time for each log file,
    _including_ the postrotate scripts!

    IMO, this makes it useless for any daemon that generates multiple
    log files, like Apache or even INN (the example they use in the man
    page!)  Who wants to have their Apache or INN servers bounced 15
    times in quick succession every night just because it generates 15
    log files that need to be rotated?

    The postrotate script should be run _one_ time for each stanza,
    after all the logs are moved and before they are compressed.

 2) If #1 is fixed, then there's a lesser problem that only one filename
    phrase is allowed per stanza.  This is probably OK for a system log
    utility since it's not a good idea to put your log files in
    different places, but for a tool like Apache where you might have
    virtual hosts for different users and want to put the log files for
    each virtual host in that user's directory, it's going to be pretty
    hard to come up with only one globbing expression that matches all
    the log files!

    Of course, Apache has more serious requirements since you don't even
    know the names of all the log files; the current Apache setup parses
    them out of the Apache config file.  It would be nice if logrotate
    handled that; maybe a special include syntax that invoked the file
    via popen() or something, and read its output.  Or, something.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <psmith@baynetworks.com>    HASMAT--HA Software Methods & Tools
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.



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