Write logging utility, or does one exist

gnu@perl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by naChoZ (Curate) on May 04, 2005 at 16:47 UTC
If the suggestions regarding usage of the logrotate aren't sufficient, you should probably take a look at Log::Log4perl. -- naChoZ Where in the nursery rhyme does it say Humpty Dumpty is an egg?	[reply]
Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by davidrw (Prior) on May 04, 2005 at 16:30 UTC
Maybe not as gracefully as envisioned by the plans for your utility, but I believe that logrotate can accomplish all your required functionality. The 'copytruncate' option should take care of the cases where there's concern about HUP/restart'ing the log generation app. As for pattern matching, the equivalent of this could be accomplished by leveraging the 'prerotate' or 'postrotate' script options, or could probably also be done via a custom script invoked via the 'compresscmd' option.	[reply]
Re^2: Write logging utility, or does one exist by gnu@perl (Pilgrim) on May 04, 2005 at 16:47 UTC
Thank you for pointing out those very important features of logrotate. You are correct in your statements, but one of the problems we have seen is in the copytruncate feature. For some reason, some of the initial log files do not return to size 0 when truncated, the binary must be shut down before the space is released. The pre/postrotate scripts could definately be modified to include/exclude data, but this would not prevent the initial accumulation of this data in the log file. Also as this would be a 'live' utility vs. a cron utility (ie. logrotate) it would be able to catch those runaway situations where the log file fills the file system before logrotate is run. I apologize, I should have included the above information in the initial question.	[reply]
Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by magog (Beadle) on May 04, 2005 at 22:01 UTC
I stopped using logrotate because it tried to HUP Apache one morning at 4AM and accidentally killed it. There are a couple of utilities along the lines of what you're suggesting: Cronolog and vlogger. I use Cronolog for Apache logfiles. I like it, but it does spawn a lot of processes (1 per logfile, and therefore 2 per virtualhost). I've been meaning to play around with vlogger, which seems to be designed to minimize the number of spawned processes. Both of these read from STDIN and rotate logfiles, but I don't believe that either one can filter based on regexes. Michael	[reply]
Re^2: Write logging utility, or does one exist by afresh1 (Hermit) on May 05, 2005 at 00:55 UTC
I use a fairly well customized version of logger.pl for my Apache logs. The benefit is that the script doesn't need to be in Apache's chroot (since I have Apache in a chroot). -- andrew	[reply]
Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by mda2 (Hermit) on May 05, 2005 at 01:03 UTC
I like of the Log::Dispach愀 family . This namespace has modules to do Logrotate, Config, log on syslog, file, screen (DBI?) or mail. Some months ago, I read about Log::Log4perl, and don愒 see because Log::Dispacth are suficient for my system... -- Marco Antonio Rio-PM	[reply]
Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by edoc (Chaplain) on May 05, 2005 at 02:44 UTC
there's also rotatelogs.. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/programs/rotatelogs.html cheers, J	[reply]
Re: Write logging utility, or does one exist by displeaser (Hermit) on May 05, 2005 at 12:52 UTC
I'd agree with magog and say that Cronolog is a good way to go. We use it extensively for apache log rotation and havnt had a problem with it yet (were using the win32 port). Rotatelogs is ok but limited, IMHO as compared to cronolog.	[reply]