Grabbing output

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Grabbing output
started by: numknuf

Posted by numknuf on May 12 2004,20:48

I have a program that outputs logs to stdout. I would like to start this program at boot before login. But I want to be able to read the current logging information. I tried with cat /dev/pts/# but didn't work, only sent my input.

Is this the right way to do this or should I do something else?
I can't send to a file since the output can grow huge in a couple of days.

Posted by cbagger01 on May 12 2004,22:42

try:

myprogramname | split -b 10m - /home/damnsmall/logfile. &

It will launch myprogramname in the background and pipe the output through the split command.

Then split will create a bunch of 10 megabyte sized log files like:

logfile.aa
logfile.ab
logfile.ac
...

You can then periodically delete older logfiles in order to conserve disk space (like logfile.aa) once the program is now writing to a new file like logfile.ab

Posted by numknuf on May 13 2004,07:55

Thanks that works.

Posted by numknuf on May 13 2004,11:22

It seems stderr is not put into the log files. Can this be fixed?

Posted by cbagger01 on May 13 2004,16:19

Yes:

myprogramname 2>&1 | split -b 10m - /home/damnsmall/logfile. &

Posted by numknuf on May 13 2004,20:00

Thanks again.