Safely clean out old log files?

[Markus Schönhaber]

04.12.2009 23:38, NoOp:

> What is the best method to safely clean out old log files? I have log
> files on some of my machines that go back to 2007 & I'm pretty sure that
> I don't need them any longer. I could of course simply rm/delete any
> logs that are older than one month, but wonder if that is the wisest choice.
> 
> I know how to easily remove the old .gz files:
> $ sudo rm -v /var/log/*.gz
> but older non-.gz files will remain.
> 
> I have /etc/logrotate.conf set to:
> 
> # rotate log files weekly
> weekly
> # keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
> rotate 4
> # create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones
> create
> 
> but logrotate wasn't set up until about the hardy or intrepid timeframe,
> so I still have a lot of old .gz junk in /var/log.

I'd use find to get a list of files last modified more than n days ago,
for example
sudo find /var/log -mtime +240
will print a list of files that were modified more than 240 days ago.
You can use find's -delete to get rid of them or rather -exec or
-print/-print0 in combination with xargs to execute arbitrary commands
with those files as an argument (for example to back them up).

-- 
Regards
  mks