> This might be a wee-bit off kernel topic, but not entirely. I'm running a
> number of periodic tests on a minimal installation of the 2.0.30 kernel
> (mainly w.r.t. the kerneld), and use cron to do so. I need to keep a cron
> log in /var/log/cron, but only for a short while. So logging has to be
> on, but I would like to clear the log automatically every once in a while
> -- or even better yet just clear the oldest couple'a thousand entries. I
> was thinking of letting cron schedule that update (e.g. rm the file or
> some such thing). Will this cause problems? It seems that cron never
> closes and reopens the filehandle, as renaming the file has no effect and
> logging continues on the renamed file. So would for instance erasing the
> log and creating a new one totally confuse cron?
If you rm the file (your unlinking the inode if I'm not mistaken) but
don't tell syslogd to re-open the logfile (by sending SIGHUP to it)
syslogd will still log to the unlinked file - which still exists on
your hard drive.
You can set the length of the logfile to zero every once in a while
without running into trouble. Just do a 'echo -n > /var/log/cron'.
Regards
Joey
-- / Martin Schulze * joey@infodrom.north.de * 26129 Oldenburg / / http://home.pages.de/~joey/ / Kernel-Patching in DOS? Selten so gelacht! -- Jochen Schoof /