LOGSAVE(8)

📦
version 1.47.4 · 7 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu stonking

💾 LOGSAVE(8) — the system manager's manual, but make it cute

okay bestie, welcome to logsave, section 8 of the manual (that's the sysadmin zone, we love it here) 💅

✨ NAME ✨

logsave — save the output of a command in a logfile 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

logsave [ -asv ] logfile cmd_prog [ ... ]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea, bestie: logsave runs cmd_prog with all the argument(s) you handed it, and it saves a whole copy of that program's output into logfile. iconic behaviour, honestly. 🎀

and the way it handles the directory situation?? if the containing directory for logfile doesn't exist yet, logsave doesn't just give up — it accumulates the output in memory until it can actually be written out. main character energy fr fr. 💖

oh and also? a copy of the output gets written to standard output too. so you get it twice, no cap. 👑

if cmd_prog is a single hyphen (-), then instead of executing a program, logsave takes its input from standard input and saves it in logfile. 🧚

so why do we care?? logsave is useful for saving the output of initial boot scripts until the /var partition is mounted, so the output can be written to /var/log. literally built for the early-boot era. 🌈

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -a — this option will cause the output to be appended to logfile, instead of replacing its current contents. (no deleting your old receipts, we preserve 🫶)
  • -s — this option will cause logsave to skip writing to the log file any text which is bracketed with a control-A (ASCII 001 or Start of Header) and control-B (ASCII 002 or Start of Text). this lets progress bar information stay visible to the user on the console, while not being written to the log file. so the vibes stay on screen, the logs stay clean ✨
  • -v — this option will make logsave to be more verbose in its output to the user. chatty. we love a talkative icon 😭

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Theodore Ts'o (tytso@mit.edu)

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

fsck(8)

ok that's the whole page bestie, go log something 💜

E2fsprogs version 1.47.4 — March 2025. that's the source and the date, mwah, signing off 🎀💖✨

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