SAVELOG(8)

✨ SAVELOG ✨

okay bestie, meet savelog 💖 It's the manual-page crew's go-to command for "save a log file" 📜 (that's the NAME line, and yes it's giving tidy).

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

savelog [-m mode] [-u user] [-g group] [-t] [-p] [-c cycle] [-l] [-j]
[-J] [-1 .. -9] [-C] [-d] [-l] [-r rolldir] [-n] [-q] [-D dateformat]
file ...

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so the savelog command saves and optionally compresses old copies of your files 🦋 Older versions get named like this:

file.<number><compress_suffix>

where number is the version number, and 0 is the newest 👑 Versions numbered above 0 get compressed unless you pass -l to stop that 🙅‍♀️ Version 0 is not compressed, because a process might still have the file open for I/O (bestie, that's the reason, it's not random). Only cycle versions of the file get kept ✨

If the file doesn't exist and you gave -t, savelog will create it 🌸

For files that do exist and have lengths greater than zero, here's the whole routine 💜

1. Version-numbered files get cycled 🔄 file.2 moves to file.3, file.1 moves to file.2, and so on. Then file.0 moves to file.1, and file itself gets deleted. Both compressed and uncompressed names get cycled, regardless of -l. Missing version files just get ignored, no drama 🫶
2. The new file.1 gets compressed unless you gave -l. It's changed according to the -m, -u, and -g flags.
3. The main file gets moved to file.0 📦
4. If you used -m, -u, -g, -t, or -p, an empty file gets created with those flags applied. With -p, the new file keeps the same owner, group, and permissions as before (main character energy 💅).
5. The new file.0 gets changed according to the -m, -u, and -g flags.

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

• -m mode — chmod the log files to mode. Implies -t 🎨
• -u user — chown the log files to user. Implies -t 👤
• -g group — chgrp the log files to group. Implies -t 👥
• -c cycle — save cycle versions of the logfile (default: 7). The cycle count has to be at least 2, no cap 🔢
• -t — touch the new logfile into existence ✨
• -l — don't compress any log files (default: do compress) 🙅‍♀️
• -p — preserve the owner, group, and permissions of the logfile 💖
• -j — compress with bzip2 instead of gzip 🍓
• -J — compress with xz instead of gzip 🌈
  • lowkey important: no strength option gets set for xz, so xz picks its own default based on the total amount of physical RAM. Also, xz can use a very large amount of memory for the higher compression levels 💀
• -1 .. -9 — compression strength or memory usage (default: 9, except for xz) 💪
• -C — force cleanup of cycled logfiles 🧹
• -d — use the standard date for rolling 📅
• -D dateformat — override the date format, using the syntax that the date(1) command understands 🧚
• -r — use rolldir instead of . to roll files 📂
• -n — do not rotate empty files 🫧
• -q — be quiet 🤫

🙈 BUGS 🙈

bestie, heads up ⚠️ If a process is still writing to file.0, and savelog moves it to file.1 and compresses it, data could be lost. 😭

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• logrotate(8) 🌷

that's a wrap, bestie! 🧚 This page came from the Debian manual, dated 30 Dec 2017, and it's filed under SAVELOG(8) 💜 Stay iconic and keep your logs cycled 💅✨