Rotating a nohup.out logfile

Question

There are a few questions on how to rotate the output file generated by nohup. Most of the answers say to use logrotate with the copytruncate option.

However this does not actually work -- when the rotation occurs, it creates the rotated logfiles ok but the original file is not actually truncated and further log output continues to be appended.

This also occurs if I don't use nohup and just run myscript.py >>myscript.log (so basically copytruncate seems completely useless).

What's the "right" way to do this? (If custom script is required, either Bash or Python is preferred.)

Copytruncate should work. However, the right way to do it is described in lain answer because copytruncate may be responsible of small data loss. — Xavier Lucas, Oct 11 '14 at 21:03

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 11 '14 at 20:43

1

The correct way to do this is to code myscript.py so that it writes to a log file rather than stdout and reacts to signals by closing and reopening it's log file.

answered Oct 11 '14 at 20:43

user9517

116,228

Ok, granted. But I want to know how to do it without doing that. (The script is a third party one and is large and difficult to modify.) – Miral Oct 11 '14 at 21:14
@Miral If copytruncate really doesn't work, use a named pipe – user9517 Oct 11 '14 at 21:19
Use your script in pipeline: 3rd_party_script.py | your_script 3rd_party_script.log – AnFi Oct 11 '14 at 22:32

Rotating a nohup.out logfile

1 Answers1