Use tee (or equivalent) but limit max file size or rotate to new file

Question

I would like to capture output from a UNIX process but limit max file size and/or rotate to a new file.

I have seen logrotate, but it does not work real-time. As I

Answer 1

Another solution will be to use Apache rotatelogs utility.

Or following script:

#!/bin/ksh
#rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]
numberOfFiles=10
while getopts "n:fltvecp:L:" opt; do
    case $opt in
  n) numberOfFiles="$OPTARG"
    if ! printf '%s\n' "$numberOfFiles" | grep '^[0-9][0-9]*$' >/dev/null;     then
      printf 'Numeric numberOfFiles required %s. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$numberOfFiles" 1>&2
      exit 1
    elif [ $numberOfFiles -lt 3 ]; then
      printf 'numberOfFiles < 3 %s. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$numberOfFiles" 1>&2
    fi
  ;;
  *) printf '-%s ignored. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$opt" 1>&2
  ;;
  esac
done
shift $(( $OPTIND - 1 ))
pathToLog="$1"
fileSize="$2"
if ! printf '%s\n' "$fileSize" | grep '^[0-9][0-9]*[BKMG]$' >/dev/null; then
  printf 'Numeric fileSize followed by B|K|M|G required %s. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$fileSize" 1>&2
  exit 1
fi
sizeQualifier=`printf "%s\n" "$fileSize" | sed "s%^[0-9][0-9]*\([BKMG]\)$%\1%"`
multip=1
case $sizeQualifier in
B) multip=1 ;;
K) multip=1024 ;;
M) multip=1048576 ;;
G) multip=1073741824 ;;
esac
fileSize=`printf "%s\n" "$fileSize" | sed "s%^\([0-9][0-9]*\)[BKMG]$%\1%"`
fileSize=$(( $fileSize * $multip ))
fileSize=$(( $fileSize / 1024 ))
if [ $fileSize -le 10 ]; then
  printf 'fileSize %sKB < 10KB. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$fileSize" 1>&2
  exit 1
fi
if ! touch "$pathToLog"; then
  printf 'Could not write to log file %s. rotatelogs.sh -n numberOfFiles pathToLog fileSize[B|K|M|G]\n' "$pathToLog" 1>&2
  exit 1
fi
lineCnt=0
while read line
do
  printf "%s\n" "$line" >>"$pathToLog"
  lineCnt=$(( $lineCnt + 1 ))
  if [ $lineCnt -gt 200 ]; then
    lineCnt=0
    curFileSize=`du -k "$pathToLog" | sed -e 's/^[  ][  ]*//' -e 's%[   ][  ]*$%%' -e 's/[  ][  ]*/[    ]/g' | cut -f1 -d" "`
    if [ $curFileSize -gt $fileSize ]; then
      DATE=`date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S`
      cat "$pathToLog" | gzip -c >"${pathToLog}.${DATE}".gz && cat /dev/null >"$pathToLog"
      curNumberOfFiles=`ls "$pathToLog".[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].gz | wc -l | sed -e 's/^[   ][  ]*//' -e 's%[   ][  ]*$%%' -e 's/[  ][  ]*/[    ]/g'`
      while [ $curNumberOfFiles -ge $numberOfFiles ]; do
        fileToRemove=`ls "$pathToLog".[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].gz | head -1`
        if [ -f "$fileToRemove" ]; then
          rm -f "$fileToRemove"
          curNumberOfFiles=`ls "$pathToLog".[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].gz | wc -l | sed -e 's/^[   ][  ]*//' -e 's%[   ][  ]*$%%' -e 's/[  ][  ]*/[    ]/g'`
        else
          break
        fi
      done
    fi
  fi
done

Answer 2

or using awk

program | awk 'BEGIN{max=100} {n+=length($0); print $0 > "log."int(n/max)}'

It keeps lines together, so the max is not exact, but this could be nice especially for logging purposes. You can use awk's sprintf to format the file name.

Here's a pipable script, using awk

#!/bin/bash
maxb=$((1024*1024))    # default 1MiB
out="log"              # output file name
width=3                # width: log.001, log.002
while getopts "b:o:w:" opt; do
  case $opt in
    b ) maxb=$OPTARG;;
    o ) out="$OPTARG";;
    w ) width=$OPTARG;;
    * ) echo "Unimplented option."; exit 1
  esac
done
shift $(($OPTIND-1))

IFS='\n'              # keep leading whitespaces
if [ $# -ge 1 ]; then # read from file
  cat $1
else                  # read from pipe
  while read arg; do
    echo $arg
  done
fi | awk -v b=$maxb -v o="$out" -v w=$width '{
    n+=length($0); print $0 > sprintf("%s.%0.*d",o,w,n/b)}'

save this to a file called 'bee', run 'chmod +x bee' and you can use it as

program | bee

or to split an existing file as

bee -b1000 -o proglog -w8 file

Answer 3

To limit the size to 100 bytes, you can simply use dd:

my_program | dd bs=1 count=100 > log

When 100 bytes are written, dd will close the pipe and my_program receives EPIPE.

Answer 4

Limiting the max size can also be done with head:

my_program | head -c 100  # Limit to 100 first bytes

See this for benefits over dd: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/121888/

Answer 5

In package apache2-utils is present utility called rotatelogs, it fully meet to your requirements.

Synopsis:

rotatelogs [ -l ] [ -L linkname ] [ -p program ] [ -f ] [ -t ] [ -v ] [ -e ] [ -c ] [ -n number-of-files ] logfile rotationtime|filesize(B|K|M|G) [ offset ]

Example:

your_program | rotatelogs -n 5 /var/log/logfile 1M

Full manual you may read on this link.

Answer 6

use split:

my_program | tee >(split -d -b 100000 -)

Or if you don't want to see the output, you can directly pipe to split:

my_program | split -d -b 100000 -

As for the log rotation, there's no tool in coreutils that does it automatically. You could create a symlink and periodically update it using a bash command:

while ((1)); do ln -fns target_log_name $(ls -t | head -1); sleep 1; done