Re: Fwd: suggestion to handle stock Fedora 8 logrotate changed extension on archived log files

MrC wrote:
> Bjorn L. wrote:
>> Would this work?
>>
>>       @TempLogFileList = sort{
>>          (stat($a))[9] <=> (stat($b))[9];
>>         }(glob($dir . $ReadConfigValues[$i]));
>>
>> where stat returns an array, the ninth index of which is the modified time.
> 
> 
> 
> I considered stat as well.  As long as file timestamps are correct this 
> works fine (and generally this is the case, esp. for automated, standard 
> rotations).  For any log data that is archived, let say in bulk to 
> remote storage, mtime is not useful, and using sequence-based filenames 
> is more reliable.  (I keep log data for a long time off line, and 
> haven't worried amount the file's mtimes, and use suffixes instead).
> 
> This is one of those hidden gotchas, that has gone undetected, likely 
> aided by somewhat vague documented behavior :
> 
>    --archives
>    Each  log-file-group has basic logfiles (i.e. /var/log/messages)
>    as well as archives (i.e. /var/log/messages.?  or  /var/log/mes-
>    sages.?.gz).   When  used  with  "--range all", this option will
>    make Logwatch search through the archives  in  addition  to  the
>    regular  logfiles.   For  other values of --range, Logwatch will
>    search the appropriate archived logs.
> 
> as well as rarity of use (not many I suspect use --range all for example).
> 
>  > Then the issue of which files to sort on is left to the config file,
>  > which is currently messages.* for the "messages" logfile, or cron.*
>  > for the cron logfile.
> 
> Well, not really - the config file has no control over mtime. :-)
> 
> MrC
> 
> 
>> Also, a question:  is the new format only for archived log files, or 
>> does it also apply to the current log file?
>>


Archives is normally on by default with the purpose of catching that 
lost period between 12 -> 4AM when logs got written to file [the 
previous day] and then rotated.

But yeah this is a bit of problem...

We use mtime for the Archive process already [around line 880 on fedora 
core 8 release 739 in CVS]

       my @FileStat = stat($Archive);
       if ($CheckTime <= ($FileStat[9])) {

So if you have archived off the files and then try to use them later you 
are already out of luck.

I guess I'm not sure what to do about this, I think the mtime stat is 
probably the right thing unless we want to really rewrite this. How wide 
spread is this new rotation going to be?

-Mike