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I have a test running which crashes. I need to find out how far it reached before crashing. It will restart again after crashing and wipe the log file. This wiping takes 10 minutes though. So If I'm saving the log file every 9 minutes, I should be able to get the log file.

The problem is that how do I write a bash script to copy a log file to a specific location and overwrite an existing file (if any) only if the file being copied is larger than the file at the destination. Else I want to leave it alone.

 25       if [ -f $testFile ]; then
 26         COUNT=`cat $testFile|wc -l`
 27                 if [ $COUNT -gt 0 ];then
 28                     ARGS=`head -1 $testFile`
 29                     echo "Executing test for ARGS"
 30                     sed -i '1d' $testFile
 31                     cd /testCode; sleep 600

At this point, the code sleeps for 10 minutes, as mentioned

 32                     /testCode/startTest.sh $ARGS

This starts the test which removes the log file. If the test did not crash, then when the test is done it goes to the next command. Else it starts again from the top

 33                     `wall "System is going down for reboot in 600 seconds. Please save your work"`
 34                     sleep 600
 35                     /sbin/reboot &
 36                     exit 0
 37                 fi
 38 fi

UPDATE #1

I figured out a way. So when the test starts, I save the logs from the previous run. Then I have enough time to check the logs while the test has restarted. The test usually crashes after an hour or so with segfaults. That gives me ample time to check the logs.

It is not a really clean way, but it will work. @Alexandre Alves also gave a good answer. That can work too. @Slm gave a good answer, but unfortunately that will not work in large tests like mine since that will clutter up the log file.

Also my issue is saving the log file, not logging per se.

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  • 1
    Can you please share some of your code? It's a little hard to follow what you're looking for. – slm♦ Aug 27 '13 at 18:45
  • I updated the question. – Alastor Moody Aug 27 '13 at 19:19
  • See my answer for tips on debugging your script. – slm♦ Aug 27 '13 at 19:33
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I would turn on debugging for the line that starts the test where it's crashing. You can use one of the techniques outlined below:

  1. Debug entire script from calling script

    bash -x /testCode/startTest.sh $ARGS

  2. Debug the script itself

    Or if you have control of this script you could add the shebang line at the top like this:

    #!/bin/bash -x

  3. Debugging specific sections of code

    Or you can do this around sections of the script where you want more verbosity:

    line1
line2

set -x
line3
line4
set +x

line5
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1

I'm guessing that you cannot change the way the test logs it's logfile.

But I can suggest two ways of doing that:

  1. If you really want a bash script then 

    #!/bin/bash
source_size=`du -b file1|cut -f 1`
destin_size=`du -b file2|cut -f 1`
if [ $source_size -gt $destin_size ]; then
    mv file1 file1.bck
    touch file1
    cp file1.bck /destination/file2
    rm file1.bck
fi

    Note that I'm doing the move and then copy the file because if you are moving the file between different file systems it will have to copy then delete. This mean that you could run into the situation of the file being overwritten by the test while being moved.

  2. Using tee

    If you know when the problem is about to happen then you could do

    tail -f logfile |tee newlog

    This will show to the stout the logfile while writing at the same time to the newlog file.

  3. Change the way the test creates the logfiles to perform logfile rotation.

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  • I can change the way the logfile is created. What do you mean by logfile rotation? – Alastor Moody Aug 27 '13 at 19:20
  • I can just copy the file instead of moving the file. I just want to backup the file periodically, so that it doesn't get overwritten. So I suppose I could do in the if loop: cp file1 file1.bck; cp file1.bck /destination/file2. I don't understand why you are removing the file2 at the end, since there is no file2 at the current dir. Or maybe you meant /destination/file2 and now you are just removing the file you just copied. Both of the options confuse me equally. – Alastor Moody Aug 27 '13 at 19:44
  • You can use wc -c <file1 to get the size of file1 with no parsing hurdles. With GNU coreutils, this calls fstat, it doesn't read the bytes to count them. – Gilles Aug 27 '13 at 23:14
  • copying takes time and from what I understood the file could be re-written while being copied. the move is just faster since it only changes the inode that has the file location on disk. updated the code as well to rm file1.bck – BitsOfNix Aug 28 '13 at 12:20
  • and by logrotation I mean, when you start logging if there is already a file then do something like this, mv logfile.orig; touch logfile. You can improve this by adding a counter and have instead logfile, logfile.1, logfile.2, etc – BitsOfNix Aug 28 '13 at 12:22

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