[TriLUG] Debian logfile rotation question

[Michael Mueller]

I included the /etc/cron.daily/syslogd script below.

On Wednesday 12 June 2002 11:02, James LewisMoss reputedly wrote:
> >>>>> On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 09:19:10 -0400, Michael Mueller
> >>>>> <mmueller at ss7box.com> said:
>
>  Michael> Does anybody know why Debian rotates log files with
>  Michael> "savelog" and "logrotate" while RH and Mandrake use only
>  Michael> "logrotate"?
>
>  Michael> I see syslogd-listfiles and savelog at heart of
>  Michael> /etc/cron.daily/sysklogd.   Are these methods unique to
>  Michael> Debian?  I use RH6.1 and Mandrake 8.1 and they do not have
>  Michael> syslogd-listfiles or savelog commands.
>
> Afaik (I use msyslog now rather than sysklogd) all debian packages
> should be using logrotate now.  But syslogd-listfiles extracts the log
> files from a syslog.conf so all the syslog written files get rotated
> (since local changes to the syslog.conf file can occur this helps
> automate the rotation list).

Aha.  When you change /etc/syslog.conf you may need to manually add another 
stanza to the /etc/logrotate.d/syslog file in the RH and Mandrake distros.  
The Debian way is to use syslogd-listfiles to read the /etc/syslog.conf and 
produce a list of files for daily, weekly, etc. rotation.  Settings in the 
syslog.conf indirectly affect whether a lof file is rotated daily or weekly.

Is logrotate the preferred way of doing things now?  In Debian 2.2r6 for 
SPARC it certainly appears that both logrotate and /etc/cron.daily/sysklogd 
are being used.

>
>  Michael> On my RH6.1 systems (slated for migration to Debian)  the
>  Michael> logrotate facility is used to in the logrotate script in
>  Michael> /etc/cron.daily.  I had to add /etc/rc.d.init.d/syslog
>  Michael> restart to get new files handles for the loggers.   The
>  Michael> Mandrake 8.1 system is same.  I notice that sysklogd
>  Michael> restarts the syslogger and the kernel logger.  It's appears
>  Michael> that I have solved a problem the Debians solved in 1998.
>
> Not sure what you are saying here.

See "restart" in script below.

>
>  Michael> Is savelog a better logrotate with compressing at cycle 1
>  Michael> instead of 0?  
>
> logrotate can compress at cycle whatever.  It's a config file
> setting.
>
>  Michael> In sysklogd what are the permission changes for in files
>  Michael> listed with "syslogd-listfiles --auth"?  -- Mike Mueller
>
> Huh?

See script below.

>
> Jim

Here is /etc/cron.daily/sysklogd from Debian 2.2r6 for SPARC:

#! /bin/sh

# sysklogd	Cron script to rotate system log files daily.
#
#		If you want to rotate other logfiles daily, edit
#		this script.  An easy way is to add them manually
#		or to add -a to syslogd-listfiles and add some grep
#		stuff
#
#		Written by Martin Schulze <joey at debian.org>.
#		$Id: cron.daily,v 1.2 1998/01/02 03:07:21 joey Exp $

cd /var/log
for LOG in `syslogd-listfiles`
do
   if [ -f $LOG ]; then
      savelog -g adm -m 640 -u root -c 7 $LOG >/dev/null
   fi
done

for LOG in `syslogd-listfiles --auth`
do
   if [ -f $LOG ]; then
      chown root.adm $LOG
      chmod o-rwx $LOG
   fi
done

# Restart syslogd
#
/etc/init.d/sysklogd reload

-- 
Mike Mueller
www.ss7box.com