NEWSYSLOG(8) | System Manager's Manual | NEWSYSLOG(8) |
newsyslog
, newsyslog.conf
—
newsyslog |
[-nrsvF ] [-f
config_file] [file ...] |
newsyslog
is a program that should be scheduled to run
periodically by cron(8). When it
is executed it archives log files if necessary. If a log file is determined to
require archiving, newsyslog
rearranges the files so
that “logfile” is empty,
“logfile.0
” has
the last period's logs in it,
“logfile.1
” has
the next to last period's logs in it and so on, up to a user-specified number
of archived logs. Optionally the archived logs can be compressed to save
space.
A log can be archived for three reasons:
The granularity of newsyslog
is dependent
on how often it is scheduled to run by
cron(8). It is recommended that
newsyslog
be run once hourly.
When starting up, newsyslog
reads in a
configuration file to determine which logs may potentially be archived. By
default, this configuration file is
/etc/newsyslog.conf. Each line of the file contains
information about a particular log file that should be handled by
newsyslog
. Each line has six mandatory fields and
three optional fields, with whitespace separating each field. Blank lines or
lines beginning with “#” are ignored. The fields of the
configuration file are as follows:
*
’),
then the size of the log file is not taken into account when determining
when to trim the log file.*
’) log rotation will
depend only on the contents of the size field.
Otherwise, the when field consists of an optional
interval in hours, optionally followed by an
‘@
’-sign and
a time in a restricted ISO 8601 format or by an
‘$
’-sign and
a time specification for logfile rotation at a fixed time once per day,
per week or per month.
If a time is specified, the log file will only be trimmed if
newsyslog
is run within one hour of the
specified time. If an interval is specified, the log file will be
trimmed if that many hours have passed since the last rotation. When
both a time and an interval are specified, the log will be trimmed if
either condition is met.
There is no provision for specification of a timezone. There is little point in specifying an explicit minutes or seconds component in the current implementation, since the only comparison is `within the hour'.
ISO 8601 restricted time format
The lead-in character for a restricted ISO 8601 time is an
‘@
’-sign.
The particular format of the time in restricted ISO 8601 is:
[[[[[cc]yy]mm]dd][T
[hh[mm[ss]]]]].
Optional date fields default to the appropriate component of the current
date; optional time fields default to midnight; hence if today is
January 22, 1999, the following date specifications are all
equivalent:
19990122T000000
’990122T000000
’0122T000000
’22T000000
’T000000
’T0000
’T00
’22T
’T
’
’Day, week and month time format
The lead-in character for day, week and month specification is
a
‘$
’-sign.
The particular format of day, week and month specification is:
[Dhh],
[Ww[Dhh]] and
[Mdd[Dhh]] respectively.
Optional time fields default to midnight. The ranges for day and hour
specifications are:
Some examples:
newsyslog
inserts to
indicate that the logs have been trimmed should not be included.-f
config_file-n
-n
implies
-v
.-r
newsyslog
must be
running as root. When running as a regular user,
newsyslog
will not be able to send a HUP signal to
syslogd(8), so this option
should be used only when debugging or trimming user generated logs.-s
-v
-F
If additional command line arguments are given,
newsyslog
will only examine log files that match
those arguments; otherwise, it will examine all files listed in the
configuration file.
newsyslog
configuration file.June 16, 2012 | NetBSD 9.4 |