Sylog and Messages files

[neffster]

Hi,

I am kinda new to the Linux world. Just a question. I used gzip to compress backups of the files "messages" and "syslog" located on /var/log/ on my Linux machine which I am using as a firewall. When using gzip I noticed that is compressed the files and removed them.

Will the system itself create new files when it sees them as missing? Or do I have to make them myself with the right permissions?

Thanx in advance!


Steffen

 

[thedaver]

Steffen, to answer your question directly, most loggers will write a new file if their logfile goes missing. That said, syslogd really doesn't like to see logfiles disappear. I would "service syslogd restart" (or whatever your distro needs) to restart the kernel/system loggers after you mess with the log files.

That said, are you aware that 'logrotate' is a normally scheduled task that can be configured to safely age, compress, rotate, etc. your logfiles? Amongst its options is to move the current "messages" log to "messages.1", start a new "messages" logfile, and gzip "messages.1".

I mention it because you could leverage logrotate to do the log rotation and compression and then you could script the "scp" or "ftp" or "mail" of your mostly recent logfiles off of the box (which I infer is the objective from your post).

man logrotate

Good luck.

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