How to do this, keeping the last messages for, say, the last month, else have a maximum byte size.

This is handy, for example, if you have a VPS or dedicated with limited storage but a bunch of sites, and so lots of access logs.

I guess the same procedure could be carried out for error.log? Less of an issue/less recommendable, sure.

Many tx.

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The easiest method is to use logrotate(8).

Alternatively you can write your own shell script to do it. Something like:

[code]
#!/bin/bash

# set nginx pid to a variable
pid=`cat /path/to/nginx.pid`

cd /path/to/nginx-logs

# remove the oldest log file and rename others
rm -f *7.gz
rename .6.gz .7.gz *.6.gz
rename .5.gz .6.gz *.5.gz
rename .4.gz .5.gz *.4.gz
rename .3.gz .4.gz *.3.gz
rename .2.gz .3.gz *.2.gz
rename .1 .2 *.1
rename .log .log.1 *.log

# reopen the log files with a USR1 signal
kill -USR1 $pid

gzip *2

exit
[/code]

Set this to run via cron daily. This will save seven days worth of logs (you can do it with any number you like), and gzip the logs from 2-7 days ago. The most recent "old" logs will be left unzipped so it can be looked at if desired. This assumes that all logs are in the same directory. If they are not, then you would need to adjust accordingly. Logs will be in format of

[list]
[*] access.log
[*] access.log.1
[*] access.log.2.gz
[*] access.log.3.gz
[*] access.log.4.gz
[*] access.log.5.gz
[*] access.log.6.gz
[*] access.log.7.gz
[/list]

YMMV of course.

--
Jim Ohlstein

Hi again Jim .. darn kind .. appreciate that.

Cracking!

Will try both methods. Anything worth reporting, I'll post it here.

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Set Up an Unmanaged VPS (4 Newbies) .. The V-P-S Bible .. (featuring Nginx) ..
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ok .. for logrotate, here's what i figured ..

/home/public_html/*/*/log/*.log /usr/local/nginx/logs/*.log {
weekly
missingok
rotate 7
notifempty
create 640 root adm
sharedscripts
postrotate
[ ! -f /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid ] || kill -USR1 `cat /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid`
endscript
}

.. anything stick out badly there?

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Set Up an Unmanaged VPS (4 Newbies) .. The V-P-S Bible .. (featuring Nginx) ..
http://www.guvnr.com/web/web-dev/setup-unmanaged-vps-newbies-v-p-s-bible/