freebsd stable - May 2007 - 6.2: maillog grows, newsyslog's misbehaving ?

Hi,

discovered that the maillog file on my freebsd Desktop
grows and grows (now at 50MB).

According to the newsyslog.conf file it should be trimmed
every night at midnight.

/var/log/maillog                        640  7     *    @T00  JC

Is it a prerequisite, that the system then runs 24x7 so that the
newsyslog default settings work ?

I would have expected, that the trimming then happens on the
next reboot, if the system doesn't run over midnight.

	Andreas ///

-- 
Andreas Klemm - Powered by FreeBSD 6
Need a magic printfilter today ? -> http://www.apsfilter.org/

At 1:08 PM +0200 5/28/07, Andreas Klemm wrote:
>Hi,
>
>discovered that the maillog file on my freebsd Desktop
>grows and grows (now at 50MB).
>
>According to the newsyslog.conf file it should be trimmed
>every night at midnight.
>
>/var/log/maillog                        640  7     *    @T00  JC
>
>Is it a prerequisite, that the system then runs 24x7 so
>that the newsyslog default settings work ?
As mentioned in the man page for newsyslog.conf :

	If a time is specified, the log file will only be trimmed if
	newsyslog(8) is run within one hour of the specified time.

You could force a rotate by running newsyslog yourself:

	/usr/sbin/newsyslog -F /var/log/maillog

but that would be a one-time fix.

There is a startup file for newsyslog in /etc/rc.d which runs the
program one-time at startup.  You could set an alternate value
for the variable 'newsyslog_flags' in your /etc/rc.conf file, and
use that to do the checks you want at startup.  This would probably
mean creating a duplicate newsyslog.conf file.

So, to answer your question:  Yes, the default settings for
newsyslog.conf do assume that your system is running 24x7.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu