.\" $FabBSD$ .\" $OpenBSD: newsyslog.8,v 1.44 2007/05/31 19:20:13 jmc Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1997, Jason Downs. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR(S) ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS .\" OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED .\" WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE .\" DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR(S) BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, .\" INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES .\" (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR .\" SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER .\" CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" This file contains changes from the Open Software Foundation. .\" .\" from: @(#)newsyslog.8 .\" .\" Copyright 1988, 1989 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .\" .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software .\" and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is .\" hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice .\" appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and .\" this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, .\" and that the names of M.I.T. and the M.I.T. S.I.P.B. not be .\" used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution .\" of the software without specific, written prior permission. .\" M.I.T. and the M.I.T. S.I.P.B. make no representations about .\" the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is .\" provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: May 31 2007 $ .Dt NEWSYSLOG 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm newsyslog .Nd trim log files to manageable sizes .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm newsyslog .Op Fl Fmnrv .Op Fl a Ar directory .Op Fl f Ar config_file .Op Ar log ... .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm is a program that should be scheduled to run periodically by .Xr cron 8 . When it is executed it archives log files if necessary. If a log file is determined to require archiving, .Nm rearranges the files so that .Pa logfile is empty, .Pa logfile.0 has the last period's logs in it, .Pa logfile.1 has the next to last period's logs in it, and so on, up to a user-specified number of archived logs. The archived logs may be optionally compressed to save space. .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl a Ar directory Specify a .Ar directory into which archived log files will be written. If .Ar directory is a relative path, it is appended to the parent directory of each log and the archived log is stored in the result. If an absolute path is given, all archived logs are stored in the given .Ar directory . If .Ar directory does not exist for a specified log, it is ignored for that entry and the log is rotated as if the .Fl a option was not specified. .It Fl F Force .Nm to trim logs regardless of the size and/or age requirements specified in .Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf . This option may be combined with the .Fl n or .Fl v flags to aid in debugging problems with .Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf . .It Fl f Ar config_file Use .Ar config_file instead of .Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf for the configuration file. .It Fl m Monitoring mode; only entries marked with an .Sq M in flags are processed. .It Fl n Do not trim the logs, but instead print out what would be done if this option were not specified. .It Fl r Removes the restriction that .Nm must be running as root. Note that in this mode .Nm will not be able to send a .Dv SIGHUP signal to .Xr syslogd 8 . .It Fl v Place .Nm newsyslog in verbose mode. In this mode it will print out each log and its reasons for either trimming that log or skipping it. .El .Pp If one or more .Ar log files are specified on the command line, only the specified logs will be rotated. Note that each .Ar log specified must have an entry in .Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf . .Pp A log can be archived because of two reasons: The log file can have grown bigger than a preset size in kilobytes, or a preset number of hours may have elapsed since the last log archive. The granularity of .Nm is dependent on how often it is scheduled to run in .Xr cron 8 . Since the program is quite fast, it may be scheduled to run every hour without any ill effects. .Pp When starting up, .Nm reads in a configuration file to determine which logs should be looked at. By default, this configuration file is .Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf . Each line of the file contains information about a particular log file that should be handled by .Nm newsyslog . Each line has five mandatory fields and up to three optional fields, with whitespace separating each field. Blank lines or lines beginning with a hash mark .Pq Ql # are ignored. The fields of the configuration file are as follows: .Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX .It Ar logfile_name The full pathname of the system log file to be archived. .It Ar owner:group This optional field specifies the owner and group for the archive file. The .Ql \&: is essential, even if the .Ar owner or .Ar group field is left blank. The fields may be numeric, or a name which is looked up in the system password and group databases. For backwards compatibility, a .Ql \&. may be used instead of a .Ql \&: . If either .Ar owner or .Ar group is not specified, the owner and/or group of the existing log file is used. .It Ar mode File mode (in octal) to use for created log files and archives. .It Ar count The number of archives to be kept besides the log file itself. .It Ar size When the size of the log file (in kilobytes) reaches this point, the log file is trimmed as described above. If this field is replaced by an .Ql * , or set to .Ql 0 , then the size of the log file is not taken into account when determining when to trim the log file. By default, files smaller than 512 bytes are not rotated unless the .Sq B (binary) flag is set or the .Fl F option is specified. This prevents .Nm from rotating files consisting solely of a message indicating that the log file has been turned over. .It Ar when The .Ar when field can consist of an interval, a specific time, or both. If the .Ar when field consists of an asterisk .Pq Ql \&* , log rotation will depend only on the contents of the .Ar size field. Otherwise, the .Ar when field consists of an optional interval in hours, possibly followed by an .So Li \&@ Sc Ns -sign and a time in a restricted .Tn ISO 8601 format or by a .So Li \&$ Sc Ns -sign and a time specification for logfile rotation at a fixed time once per day, per week or per month. .Pp If a time is specified, the log file will only be trimmed if .Nm 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, both conditions must be satisfied for the rotation to take place. .Pp There is no provision for the specification of a time zone. There is little point in specifying an explicit minutes or seconds component in the current implementation, since the only comparison is .Sq within the hour . .Pp .Sy ISO 8601 restricted time format: The lead-in character for a restricted .Tn ISO 8601 time is an .So Li \&@ Sc Ns -sign . The particular format of the time in restricted .Tn ISO 8601 is: .Sm off .Oo Oo Oo Oo Oo .Va \&cc Oc .Va \&yy Oc .Va \&mm Oc .Va \&dd Oc .Oo Li \&T .Oo Va \&hh .Oo Va \&mm .Oo Va \&ss .Oc Oc Oc Oc Oc . .Sm on Optional date fields default to the appropriate component of the current date; optional time fields default to midnight. For example, if today is January 22, 1999, the following date specifications are all equivalent: .Pp .Bl -item -compact -offset indent .It .Ql 19990122T000000 .It .Ql 990122T000000 .It .Ql 0122T000000 .It .Ql 22T000000 .It .Ql T000000 .It .Ql T0000 .It .Ql T00 .It .Ql 22T .It .Ql \&T .It .Ql \& .El .Pp .Sy Day, week and month time format: The lead-in character for day, week and month specification is a .So Li \&$ Sc Ns -sign . The particular format of day, week and month specification is: .Op Va D\&hh , .Op Va W\&w Ns Op Va D\&hh and .Op Va M\&dd Ns Op Va D\&hh , respectively. Optional time fields default to midnight. The ranges for day and hour specifications are: .Pp .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact -offset indent .It Ar hh hours, range 0 ... 23 .It Ar w day of week, range 0 ... 6, 0 = Sunday .It Ar dd day of month, range 1 ... 31, or the letter .Em L or .Em l to specify the last day of the month. .El .Pp .Sy Some examples: .Bl -tag -width Ds -compact -offset indent .It Ar $D0 rotate every night at midnight (same as .Ar @T00 ) .It Ar $D23 rotate every day at 23:00 hr (same as .Ar @T23 ) .It Ar $W0D23 rotate every week on Sunday at 23:00 hr .It Ar $W5D16 rotate every week on Friday at 16:00 hr .It Ar $M1D0 rotate on the first day of every month at midnight (i.e., the start of the day; same as .Ar @01T00 ) .It Ar $M5D6 rotate on every 5th day of the month at 6:00 hr (same as .Ar @05T06 ) .El .Pp .It Ar flags The optional .Ar flags field specifies if the archives should have any special processing done to the archived log files. The .Sq Z flag will make the archive files compressed to save space using .Xr gzip 1 or .Xr compress 1 , depending on compilation options. The .Sq B flag means that the file is a binary file, and so the ASCII message which .Nm inserts to indicate the fact that the logs have been turned over should not be included. The .Sq M flag marks this entry as a monitored log file. The .Sq F flag specifies that symbolic links should be followed. .It Ar pid_file This optional field specifies a file containing the PID of a process to send a signal (usually .Dv SIGHUP ) to instead of .Pa /var/run/syslog.pid . .It Ar signal Specify the signal to send to the process instead of .Dv SIGHUP . Signal names must start with .Dq SIG and be the signal name, not the number, e.g., .Dv SIGUSR1 . .It Ar command This optional field specifies a command to run instead of sending a signal to the process. The command must be enclosed in double quotes .Pq Ql \&" . The empty string, .Ql \&"\&" , can be used to prevent .Nm from sending a signal or running a command. You cannot specify both a command and a PID file. .Em NOTE: If you specify a command to be run, .Nm will not send a .Dv SIGHUP to .Xr syslogd 8 . .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /etc/newsyslog.conf .It Pa /etc/newsyslog.conf default configuration file .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr compress 1 , .Xr gzip 1 , .Xr syslog 3 , .Xr syslogd 8 .Sh AUTHORS .Bd -unfilled Theodore Ts'o, MIT Project Athena Copyright 1987, Massachusetts Institute of Technology .Ed