Delete a log files in Linux or UNIX
Q. How do I delete a log file in Linux without distributing running application? My log file size is quite huge.
A. You can simply truncate a log file using > filename syntax. For example if log file name is /var/log/message, use:
# >/var/log/message
If you really wanted to delete or remove a file type:
# rm /var/log/message
logrotate tool
A better approach is to use logrotate tool. It is designed to ease administration of systems that generate large numbers of log files. It allows automatic rotation, compression, removal, and mailing of log files. Each log file may be handled daily, weekly, monthly, or when it grows too large.
See previous logrotate faq article
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Discussion on This FAQ
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June 16th, 2007 at 3:39 am
my log files /var/log deleted is it creates any problem
June 16th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
/var/log is directory, if you delete the same just recreate directory using mkdir command:
[code]mkdir /var/log[/code]
July 19th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
How would you specify to delete log that are over a certain age. ie 2days old or something like that. Thanks for the help.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
There are 2 options, either use log logrotate or use find command to get list of 2 days old files and empty them. You can find information about logrotate and about find command here only. Use search box to get information
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I’ve been doing some more research and had another question if you wouldn’t mine throwing in some input.
I want to remove apache logs after about a month. So I was going to set something up like this that I found online.
This is an example of a /etc/logrotate.d/httpd
/var/log/httpd/*.log {
daily
rotate 30
missingok
notifempty
sharedscripts
postrotate
/bin/kill -HUP `cat /var/run/httpd.pid 2>/dev/null` 2> /dev/null || true endscript
}
Now from what I understand this will rotate the log daily meaning create a new log everyday. The 30 means that it will hold 30 of these logs before deleting them (or compressing if I put that option in there)
Also, before I go and set this up, I want to test it on 1 websites log incase I mess things up. Would it be ok to replace the line
/var/log/httpd/*.log
with
/var/log/httpd/”website”*.log to that affect to test in one website before doing all of them?
Does it sound like I’m on the right track or am I completely lost
thanks again for your input.