Re: [logs] Log rotation tools

From: Sweth Chandramouli (svcat_private)
Date: Mon Sep 17 2001 - 03:41:24 PDT

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    On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 12:01:54PM -0400, Jose Nazario wrote:
    > i still vote for logrotate. its just soooo configurable, in all the right
    > areasl.
    	So that we might be able to quantify things like this,
    I'd like to pose the question of just what features in a log rotation
    tool are useful.  Things that come to mind:
    
    * Rotation frequency configurable by size, frequency, or both.
    * Rotation depth (how many old log.num files are stored) configurable by
      size, number of files, or both.
    * Hooks for automatic compression (via configurable algorithms) and/or
      other postprocessing of archived logs (either immediately after
      rotation, or after reaching an arbitrary rotation depth).  (I see this
      as subsuming logrotate's mail, mailfirst, and maillast directives.)
    * Templatized rotated filename generation (not just adding an extension).
    * Ability to specify rotate+HUP or copy+truncate rotation mechanisms
      on a per-file basis.
    * Arbitrary pre-rotation and post-rotation procedures and tests.  (By
      tests, I'm thinking of things like being able to decide whether to
      rotate a given log based on whether a particular process is running,
      or whether any process has the file open; by procedures, I mean
      functionality like logrotate's "postrotate" directive or the creation
      of new files via "create".)
    * Ability to run as a periodic cleanup script, or a daemon.
    * Ability to specify options as defaults, for specific files, and/or
      for files matching wildcard/regex patterns.
    * Ability to specify minimum/maximum time between rotations.
    * Highly Portable (including to Windows environments)
    
    	Am I missing anything?
    
    	(Obviously, logrotate does most of these things; once we
    have a list of all of the features that would be nice to have, it would
    be nice to make a chart of what tools offer what features.)
    
    	-- Sweth.
    
    -- 
    Sweth Chandramouli ; <svcat_private>
    President, Idiopathic Systems Consulting
    
    
    



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