[PATCH] newsyslog - don't compress first log file

[Ulrich Spoerlein]

On Fri, 10.08.2007 at 09:13:18 -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 02:19:55PM +0300, Artis Caune wrote:
> > How about aditional flag ("X") to newsyslog, which don't compress first 
> > log file?
> >...
> 
> Interesting idea, but it still falls short of something we recently
> needed to do at work:
> 
> We have a requirement to retain some number of logfiles, but only
> compress those older than the Nth generation.
> 
> Thus, we might retain 90 "rotated" generations of the log file, of which
> the oldest 50 are compressed, while the newest 40 are not.

Sorry, to be so blunt, but I think this .N suffix is a stupid approach
for archival purposes. You never know which time span is included in the
file foo.17.gz.

I'd rather see an extension for newsyslog which would rotate foo to
foo.2007-08-12.gz, iff rotation is done every day at midnight.

That way, you get a 'stable' name, which makes it easier to find the
logfile for 1999-12-31 or 2000-01-01 some years from now.

Right now, I have to use syslog-ng for that purpose.

Cheers,
Ulrich Spoerlein
-- 
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak, and remove all doubt.