NEWSYSLOG(8) System Manager's Manual NEWSYSLOG(8) NAME newsyslog -- maintain system log files to manageable sizes SYNOPSIS newsyslog [-Fnrv] [-f config_file] [-a directory] [file ...] DESCRIPTION The newsyslog utility 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: 1. It is larger than the configured size (in kilobytes). 2. A configured number of hours have elapsed since the log was last archived. 3. This is the specific configured hour for rotation of the log. The granularity of newsyslog is dependent on how often it is scheduled to run by cron(8). Since the program is quite fast, it may be scheduled to run every hour without any ill effects, and mode three (above) assumes that this is so. 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 five mandatory fields and four optional fields, with whitespace sepa- rating each field. Blank lines or lines beginning with ``#'' are ignored. If ``#'' is placed in the middle of the line, ``#'' character and the rest of the line after it is ignored. To prevent special meaning, the ``#'' may be escaped with ``\'', in this case preceding ``\'' is removed and ``#'' treated as ordinary character. The fields of the configuration file are as follows: logfile_name Name of the system log file to be archived. owner:group This optional field specifies the owner and group for the archive file. The ":" is essential, even if the owner or group field is left blank. The field may be numeric, or a name which is present in /etc/passwd or /etc/group. mode Specify the mode of the log file and archives. count Specify the number of archive files to be kept besides the log file itself. size When the size of the log file reaches size in kilobytes, the log file will be trimmed as described above. If this field is replaced by an asterisk (`*'), then the size of the log file is not taken into account when determining when to trim the log file. when The when field can consist of an interval, a specific time, or both. If the when field is an asterisk (`*') log rotation will de- pend only on the contents of the size field. Otherwise, the when field consists of an optional interval in hours, optionally fol- lowed by an `@'-sign and a time in a restricted ISO 8601 format or by an `$'-sign and a time specification for logfile rotation at a fixed time once per day, per week or per month. If a time is specified, the log file will only be trimmed if newsyslog is run within one hour of the specified time. If an in- terval is specified, the log file will be trimmed if that many hours have passed since the last rotation. When both a time and an interval are specified, both conditions must be satisfied for the rotation to take place. There is no provision for specification of a timezone. There is little point in specifying an explicit minutes or seconds component in the current implementation, since the only comparison is `within the hour'. ISO 8601 restricted time format The lead-in character for a restricted ISO 8601 time is an `@'-sign. The particular format of the time in restricted ISO 8601 is: [[[[[cc]yy]mm]dd][T[hh[mm[ss]]]]]. Optional date fields de- fault to the appropriate component of the current date; optional time fields default to midnight; hence if today is January 22, 1999, the following date specifications are all equivalent: `19990122T000000' `990122T000000' `0122T000000' `22T000000' `T000000' `T0000' `T00' `22T' `T' `' Day, week and month time format The lead-in character for day, week and month specification is a `$'-sign. The particular format of day, week and month specifica- tion is: [Dhh], [Ww[Dhh]] and [Mdd[Dhh]] respectively. Optional time fields default to midnight. The ranges for day and hour seci- fications are: hh hours, range 0 ... 23 w day of week, range 0 ... 6, 0 = Sunday dd day of month, range 1 ... 31, or the letter L or l to specify the last day of the month. Some examples: $D0 rotate every night at midnight (same as @T00) $D23 rotate every day at 23:00 hr (same as @T23) $W0D23 rotate every week on Sunday at 23:00 hr $W5D16 rotate every week on Friday at 16:00 hr $M1D0 rotate at the first day of every month at midnight (i.e., the start of the day; same as @01T00) $M5D6 rotate on every 5th day of month at 6:00 hr (same as @05T06) flags This optional field specifies if the archive should have any spe- cial processing done to the archived log files. The Z flag will make the archive files compress to save space by using gzip(1). The J flag will make the archive files compress to save space by using bzip2(1). The B flag means that the file is a binary file, and so the ASCII message which newsyslog inserts to indicate the fact that the logs have been turned over should not be included. The - flag means nothing, but can be used as a placeholder when the path_to_pid_file field is specified. G flag means that the speci- fied logfile_name is a shell pattern, which instructs the newsyslog to archive all filenames matching this pattern using the same op- tions. See glob(3) for details on syntax and matching rules. path_to_pid_file This optional field specifies the file name to read to find the daemon process id. If this field is present, a signal_number is sent the process id contained in this file. This field must start with "/" in order to be recognized properly. signal_number This optional field specifies the signal number will be sent to the daemon process. By default a SIGHUP will be sent. OPTIONS The following options can be used with newsyslog: -f config_file Instruct newsyslog to use config_file instead of /etc/newsyslog.conf for its configuration file. -a directory Specify a directory into which archived log files will be written. If a relative path is given, it is appended to the path of each log file and the resulting path is used as the directory into which the archived log for that log file will be written. If an absolute path is given, all archived logs are written into the given directory. If any component of the path directory does not exist, it will be created when newsyslog is run. -v Place newsyslog in verbose mode. In this mode it will print out each log and its reasons for either trimming that log or skipping it. -n Cause newsyslog not to trim the logs, but to print out what it would do if this option were not specified. -r Remove the restriction that newsyslog must be running as root. Of course, newsyslog will not be able to send a HUP signal to sys- logd(8) so this option should only be used in debugging. -F Force newsyslog to trim the logs, even if the trim conditions have not been met. This option is useful for diagnosing system problems by providing you with fresh logs that contain only the problems. 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. FILES /etc/newsyslog.conf newsyslog configuration file BUGS Doesn't yet automatically read the logs to find security breaches. AUTHORS Theodore Ts'o, MIT Project Athena Copyright 1987, Massachusetts Institute of Technology COMPATIBILITY Previous versions of the newsyslog utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. Begining with FreeBSD 3.3, this has been changed to a colon (``:'') character so that user and group names may con- tain the dot character. The dot (``.'') character is still accepted for backwards compatibility. SEE ALSO gzip(1), syslog(3), chown(8), syslogd(8) FreeBSD 5.0 April 4, 2000 NEWSYSLOG(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | BUGS | AUTHORS | COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO
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