Hi,

Logrotate is designed to do just what you are asking.

On my PI install (Rasperry PI OS, 64 bit from September)  logrotate
is already installed.  It will most likely be installed on almost any
linux type system unless it is super small.

If you go look at the directory /var/log you can see what it is
doing.  And the config files which make that happen live in
/etc/logrotate.conf and /etc/logrotate.d/

Now, the default is to run once a day and you need to run more
often.  Also rather than daily or weekly rotation you would like it
to rotate on 10MB, 20MB, or what ever.

What I would personally recommend is that you not run this as root,
rather, you run it as the user who is writing your log file.  Just
let the current logrotate keep running as it is and you run it
separately.

Write a config file, say, TimRowledgesExcellentAdventure.conf.

It looks like this (or so, go read the man page)

/data/toothpick/bloodytoothpicklog.log {

    missingok

    rotate 10

    size 10M

    nocompress

    nomail

}

There are lots of other options but I think this does what you want.

- missingok - don't complain if there are no log files.

- keep the last 10

- rotate regardless of anything when they are more than 10 Meg.

- do not compress the files.  

- do not email anything

Then create a crontab entry for the user to run this that runs as
often as you want (hourly, every minute) 

with the command line 

logrotate -s /data/toothpick/logrotate.state
/data/toothpick/TimRowledgesExcellentAdventure.conf 

NB:  This will only work only if Toothpick closes and re-opens the
file on each write.  Or every so often.  But if it keeps the file
open then logrotate won't do what you want.  

cheers

bruce

On 2022-12-10T02:03:36.000+01:00, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>
wrote:

> I spent way too long failing to find the right search phrase, so maybe somebody here knows sometihng to get me started.
> 
> My server system is writing a *lot* of output to a file via the Toothpick package's FileLogger class. I mean, like a GB/hr. I can turn it down but then I don't see the stuff that explains why it went boom. Evidently naively writing to a file and watching it with `tail -f` isn't the best idea here but all I'm spotting on the google is lots of  'use logrotate' stuff that doesn't seem to be applicable at all.
> 
> Is there some technique I can use that lets me write out stuff and watch it without it filling up my little SSD? Some way to specify a file that has a maximum size and that dumps the older stuff as more is added? Some program I can pipe data to that keeps a limited set of messages?
> 
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Useful random insult:- Calls people to ask them their phone number.

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