Good to know also. I tried the cat /dev/null > logfile technique and while I did not loos any data there is about 4K or so of garbage at the begining of the logfile. In less it shows up as all '@' (noquotes) symbols. Does not look good for the cat dev/null > technique. I am going to use the logrotate any way but was hoping to learn something. I guess I did, just not what I was hoping :-) Thanks again Bret Tom Gilbert wrote: > > * Bret Hughes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > There appears to be a copy and truncate functions that never acually > > closes or deletes the file. The man page talks about it being there for > > programs that cannot be restarted. That is what prompted my question. > > I have not had a chance to try it yet though. Probably try to get to it > > next week. > > > > I was wondering how the file handle thing worked. I deleted the file > > and it did disappear from ls but the shell the jre was running in did > > not crash and I am wondering why not. > > Part of the way the unix file system standard works is that a file is > not removed from the disk until all programs have finished with it. An > unlink()ed file hangs around until all apps have close()ed it. > > > Makes sense if the file is not > > really gone and the shell is still writing to it. Any ideas how to tell > > what file handles a program has via the OS? > > All logrotate needs to do is copy the log to another file and truncate > it by open()ing it with in "write but don't append mode". > > The file is truncated safely. The delay between the end of the copy > and the truncate is so small that its very unlikely you would lose > even one character of output under heavy load. > > Tom. > -- > .-------------------------------------------------------. > .^. | Tom Gilbert, England | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | > /V\ |----------------------| www.tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk | > // \\ | Sites I recommend: `--------------------------------| > /( )\ | www.freshmeat.net www.enlightenment.org slashdot.org | > ^^-^^ `-------------------------------------------------------' > > -- > To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" > as the Subject.
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