From owner-freebsd-stable  Sun Nov 12 13:47:37 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Received: from mailhost01.reflexnet.net (mailhost01.reflexnet.net [64.6.192.82])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 405FB37B4CF
	for <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>; Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:47:29 -0800 (PST)
Received: from 149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com ([64.6.211.149]) by mailhost01.reflexnet.net  with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.197.19);
	 Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:46:01 -0800
Received: (from cjc@localhost)
	by 149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com (8.11.0/8.11.0) id eACLlOU21027;
	Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:47:24 -0800 (PST)
	(envelope-from cjc)
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 13:47:24 -0800
From: "Crist J . Clark" <cjclark@reflexnet.net>
To: Tim Tsai <tim@futuresouth.com>
Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: periodic and 310.accounting
Message-ID: <20001112134724.O75251@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com>
Reply-To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu
References: <20001112075532.A7158@futuresouth.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i
In-Reply-To: <20001112075532.A7158@futuresouth.com>; from tim@futuresouth.com on Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 07:55:32AM -0600
Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

On Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 07:55:32AM -0600, Tim Tsai wrote:
> I was trying to look for some accounting logs today and noticed the
> periodic mechanism and specifically /etc/periodic/daily/310.accounting.
> It seems to me keeping logs for the past 3 days isn't really enough

I wanted to point out that the "logs" are kept for much longer than
three days. The raw accounting files are only kept for three days, but
I believe that /var/account/savacct and /var/account/usracct are never
touched by any of the distributed daily/weekly/monthly scripts. Your
accounting information will be saved forever unless you remove it.

> and
> the much smarter way is the method used by /etc/newsyslog.conf.  Actually,
> I'd prefer to use newsyslog.conf to handle the accounting files as well.

That is an interesting idea. The problem with that method is that you
probably want to run a 'sa -s' command right when the logs are rotated
in the same way newsyslog HUPs syslogd right after it does the
rotations.

> My question is, how do I accommodate this desire without having to modify
> /etc/daily/310.accounting each time we update the system.  Seems like a
> default override would be useful.  This might apply to other system log
> files as well.  Please note that we are quite capable of changing the
> scripts to suit our needs I just don't want to get out of sync with the
> system.

What version are you running? Have you seen the new
/usr/local/etc/periodic/ insanity yet? Have a look at
/etc/defaults/periodic.conf and the periodic script,
/usr/sbin/periodic, to see how it all works.

> PS:  how exactly does periodic get called?  It's not in root's crontab.

Someone else already answered, but for completeness, see the system
crontab in /etc/crontab.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@alum.mit.edu


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message