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I'm running an application that writes to log.txt. The app was updated to a new version, making the supported plugins no longer compatible. It forces an enormous amount of errors into log.txt and does not seem to support writing to a different log file.
How can I write them to a different log?
I've considered replacing log.txt with a hard link (application can't tell the difference right?) Or a hard link that points to /dev/null. What are my options?
You can make a symbolic link to /dev/null and you don't need to be root:
ln -s /dev/null log.txt
ls -l log.txt would show that it's a symlink to /dev/null, rather than relying on knowing that e.g. "1, 3" is somehow significant.
Dec 21, 2016 at 19:18
# cp -a /dev/null log.txt
This copies your null device with the right major and minor dev numbers to log.txt so you have another null.
Devices are not known by name at all in the kernel but rather by their major and minor numbers. Since I don't know what OS you have I found it convenient to just copy the numbers from where we already know they are. If you make it with the wrong major and minor numbers, you would most likely have made some other device, perhaps a disk or something else you don't want writing to.
sudo (or running as the root user). Please explain (in your answer) what you mean by "the right major and minor dev numbers".
Dec 21, 2016 at 3:40
/dev/null, as used in your command. And, I think it would help future readers to note in your answer that sudo is required.
Dec 21, 2016 at 4:07
cp -a /dev/null log.txt and my comments?
Dec 21, 2016 at 4:17
sudo to perform this command, unless you happen to be running as user root (which is generally discouraged). Using sudo (or running as root) to create a hard link (this answer) or a symlink (@V.Michel's answer) may be the right solution after all, if the file must be placed in a location that any user account can write to, but the point is: do note that requirement explicitly.
Dec 21, 2016 at 4:34
mknod. Do note that comments generally receive little attention, so someone reading the question only and then your answer may be confused (as was I; also note that most people are never exposed to concepts such as major and minor device numbers).
Dec 21, 2016 at 4:58
The other answers here will probably work. In particular, the symlink solution is probably going to be the easiest solution. I offer this mainly for completeness.
The solutions involing mknod (or cp -a) become problematic if the filesystem containing the file doesn't support devices (e.g., it was mounted with the nodev option, for example). And of course, hard links across filesystems simply won't work.
An alternative to hard links or creating new devices nodes is to use bind mounts, which let you mount a file or directory from one part of your filesystem tree onto another. So, for example, you can run:
mount -o bind /dev/null /path/to/log.txt
This acts a lot like a hard link, but:
For a complete example:
bash-4.3# ls -l /var/log/boot.log
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 7436 Dec 19 10:00 /var/log/boot.log
bash-4.3# mount -o bind /dev/null /var/log/boot.log
bash-4.3# ls -l /var/log/boot.log
crw-rw-rw-. 1 root root 1, 3 Dec 19 09:58 /var/log/boot.log
bash-4.3# echo words words words > /var/log/boot.log
bash-4.3# ls -l /var/log/boot.log
crw-rw-rw-. 1 root root 1, 3 Dec 19 09:58 /var/log/boot.log
nodev filesystem.
It depends critically on HOW the application handles log.txt.
If the application just opens the existing file and writes to it then as described in other answers you can symlink it to /dev/null, symlink it somewhere else, hardlink it somewhere else (though hardlinks can't be cross filesystem so there isn't a lot of point in this) create a copy of the /dev/null device node there etc.
OTOH if the application deletes and recreates log.txt none of that will work. You could symlink the whole directory somewhere else to redirect the writes to a different filesystem but thats about it and you would have to deal with other stuff in the directory.
I guess if you really wanted you could create a custom overlay filesystem that passed most operations right through while throwing away any attempts to create a file called log.txt.
chattr +i log.txt the first time and the application won’t delete the file anymore.
Jan 16, 2019 at 16:52
Well, one ungraceful method with named pipe：
# create a named pipe
mkfifo /path/to/log.txt
# read contents from the pipe and redirect them to /dev/null
cat /path/to/log.txt > /dev/null
you almost can do anything with the dumped log, such as filter or send over nc.
cat process is killed or crash, the login program will hang when the pipe is full.
Jan 22, 2019 at 14:47
chattr +i log.txt the first time and the application won’t delete the file anymore.
Consider making the file an actual null device. A file "log.txt" created with mknod, with the right file type and same minor and major numbers, will act as a null device because it is.
chmod -w log.txt?