RECAPLOG(8)

🧹 RECAPLOG — the section 8 girlies know 💅

okay bestie, gather round, because recaplog is a whole system manager's manual situation and she is lowkey the most unbothered queen in your /etc. 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

recaplog — she handles all the logs that recap generates, and by "handles" I mean she compresses them and/or deletes them. iconic behavior fr fr. 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

recaptool [-n|-v|-h|-V]

(no, you're not seeing things, that's literally what it says, and we respect the mystery 🫶)

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so recaplog is a user-configurable script — meaning you, yes you, get to decide how she behaves. she runs periodically out of cron or systemd.timer and her whole job is:

• compress the recap log files that are older than one day 🗜️
• delete log files that are older than a configurable amount of days 💀

and here's the gag: recaplog will not produce output if a tty is not found. which sounds antisocial but is actually exactly the point — it's perfect for when you're running from cron and nobody's there to read your little messages anyway. main character energy that respects your time. 👑

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

one bullet per flag, no skipping, no cap:

• -h, --help — prints out the help. your girl is helpful. 🙈
• -n, --dry-run — performs a dry run. (heads up bestie: this implies verbose, so she's gonna yap about what she would have done.) 🔍
• -v, --verbose — prints to stdout. she's talking now. 📢
• -V, --version — prints the version and exits. quick lil flex. ⭐

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🎀 SETTINGS 🎀

these can be modified via the config file, iykyk. 📝

• LOG_COMPRESS — enables (1) or disables (0) log compression. (default: 1) — so compression is on out of the box, slay.
• LOG_EXPIRY — number of days held for the logs. (default: 15) — two weeks and a day of log hoarding, then she clears house. 🧹

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🦋 FILES 🦋

• /etc/recap.conf — the configuration file.
• /etc/cront.d/recap — the cronjob file.
• /usr/lib/systemd/systemd/recaplog.{service,timer} — unit files for recaplog.
• /var/log/recap/recaplog.log — the recaplog file.

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😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

found a bug? issues and bugs go to github, bestie:

<https://github.com/rackerlabs/recap/issues>

do NOT suffer in silence, we're a community. 🫶

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

the recap scripts are maintained by Rackspace, and the full list of contributors lives right here:

<https://github.com/rackerlabs/recap/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#contributors>

shoutout to every single one of them, fr fr. 👑

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

recap.conf(5), recap(8), crontab(5), systemd.timer(5)

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⚠️ ok one last thing, and I mean it: this page is dated Aug 18, 2017, it's from the System Manager's Manual (that's the section 8 vibe, which is why we say RECAPLOG(8)), and it ships as part of the recap scripts. so when you're reading it in 2024 and beyond, that's the vintage. she's a classic, not outdated. periodt. 💅✨

k bye, go compress something 🎀