logrotate tip of the day

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

David Kramer wrote:
> When you add your own logrotate rules, say to rotate files in
> /home/david/log, DO NOT specify the wildcard as /home/david/log/*
> instead of /home/david/log/*.log, as every gzipped archived log will
> then also be rotated, and so on, and so on, and so on.

There are a number of ways you can shoot yourself in the foot with 
logrotate, and it usually won't warn you, or provide much diagnostics 
when something goes wring.

It's really a crufty old tool that should never have been written in C. 
Only due to some of the feature patches in recent years has it become 
tolerable (like incorporating the date into archived file names, rather 
than perpetually renaming archived files).

It would long since have been replaced with something better were it not 
for the logrotate config files bundled with most packages that log data.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/