Comments on: Delete a log files in Linux or UNIX

By: chandra

chandra — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:35:50 +0000

simply wirte rm file.log and press enter

By: dave

dave — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 16:42:39 +0000

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.

By: vivek

vivek — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:49:33 +0000

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

By: dave

dave — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:23:23 +0000

How would you specify to delete log that are over a certain age. ie 2days old or something like that. Thanks for the help.

By: vivek

vivek — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 13:31:26 +0000

/var/log is directory, if you delete the same just recreate directory using mkdir command:
[code]mkdir /var/log[/code]

By: vb

vb — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:39:21 +0000

my log files /var/log deleted is it creates any problem