Re: Message files not rotating
On Monday 07 August 2006 12:20 am, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 06, 2006 at 17:23:13 +0000, Elmer E. Dow wrote:
> > On Sunday 06 August 2006 09:43 pm, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> > > On Sun, Aug 06, 2006 at 02:31:40PM +0000, Elmer E. Dow wrote:
> > > > I discovered that /var/log/messages is 428.6 MB on my IBM
> > > > R40 laptop running Sarge. I see /var/log/messages.1.gz, to
> > > > messages.6.gz. None of those are more than 302 KB and
> > > > they're a year old. Syslog is in a similar situation. Other
> > > > log files aren't so big, but they haven't been rotated in a
> > > > year either. Why did rotation stop? How do I start it
> > > > again? Logrotate was installed. I just got rid of it. Could
> > > > it have been interfering?
> > >
> > > umm... logrotate rotates the logs. removing it will prevent
> > > the logs from being rotated. check man logrotate to get the
> > > output from logrotate emailed to you so you can see what it
> > > happening. you should confirm that there is still a cron job
> > > for log rotate. When I've had problems with logrotate in the
> > > past is has been a permissions issue, so maybe you have
> > > changed some permissons inadvertantly causing this problem.
> > >
> > > A
> >
> > From the reading I've done recently, I was under the impression
> > that Debian (unlike RedHat) used syslogd and cron to handle log
> > rotation. According to
> > http://www.ducea.com/2006/06/06/rotating-linux-log-files/ , log
> > rotation is handled in two ways on a Debian system (in contrast
> > to RedHat, etc.). Most system log files are rotated by syslog
> > itself and not by using logrotate. Logrotate is the default
> > choice for all other log files (application logs). Indeed,
> > /etc/logrotate.d contains scripts for apps (aptitude,
> > exim4-base, ppp, etc.), while # /usr/sbin/syslogd-listfiles
> > --weekly
> > /var/log/mail.warn
> > /var/log/uucp.log
> > /var/log/user.log
> > /var/log/daemon.log
> > /var/log/messages
> > /var/log/debug
> > /var/log/auth.log
> > /var/log/mail.err
> > /var/log/mail.log
> > /var/log/kern.log
> > /var/log/lpr.log
> > /var/log/mail.info
> > R40:/home/ellsworth#
> >
> > Logrotate isn't listed in a cron job since I deleted the
> > logroate package, but strangely logrotate.d still exists. I
> > hope that reinstalling logrotate will set it up again. You're
> > right, I need to put logrotate back for the apps, but it
> > appears that it's syslogd's responsibility to rotate system
> > logs. I've seen quite a bit online about changing a Debian
> > system to use logrotate for system files, but I haven't done
> > that here. Feel free to enlighten me if I'm wrong in my
> > understanding of this. What could I have done to have messed up
> > what syslogd should be doing? I checked, and syslogd has a
> > script file in cron.daily and cron.weekly with correct
> > permissions. Now what?
>
> Are you sure that the cronjobs actually run during the night? You
> could put a short script into /etc/cron.daily, just "touch
> /tmp/cron-flag" or something similar, to rule out problems with
> your cron setup.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Florian
I noticed that the system-wide crontab seems to call for
anacron. See below.
R40:/home/ellsworth# cat /etc/crontab
# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don't have to run the `crontab'
# command to install the new version when you edit this file.
# This file also has a username field, that none of the other
crontabs do.
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
# m h dom mon dow user command
17 * * * * root run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts
--report /etc/cron.daily
47 6 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts
--report /etc/cron.weekly
52 6 1 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts
--report /etc/cron.monthly
#
R40:/home/ellsworth#
Given that this is a laptop, that made sense, so I
installed it. Bingo! It immediately started to run cron jobs,
rotating logs, etc. Now I remember that I'd used ancron for this
when running RedHat on this laptop a few years ago.
One more question: Is it possible to run cron jobs manually? That
way I could run cron at my convenience, rather than tie up system
resources while I'm working.
Thanks for you help.
-- Elmer E. Dow
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