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I have a bot on Marathi language wikipedia. The bot runs from Wikimedi's toolforge server. I have set up a cron job which generates two files: one .err and another is .out

Following is my the content from my cron file:
0 9 * * * jsub -release buster -N KiranBOT1 kiranbot1.sh

The job runs daily. I was away for around a week, and the .err file became around 500 megabytes in size. So I deleted it, and after one run when I checked the newly generated file, it was around 8 megabytes.

It doesn't generate multiple .err files, but it keeps adding on the details in the same file, which increases the file size tremendeously. I have created that bot in such a way, that even if I stop editing Wikipedia/stop checking the bot, even then the bot would keep doing its task. In such a scenario, the .err file size would just keep on increasing. I don't want that to happen.

I can live without these .err, and .out files. Is there a way to stop generating these files?

Thanks a lot in advance,
-usernamekiran.

Edit: The file names are KiranBOT1.err, and KiranBOT1.out. I apologise, I should have mentioned this in my original question.

usernamekiran
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    The day you stop generating the logs is the day that you need them... why not create a dated daily pair of files, and use logrotate to remove after (say) one week? – Andrew Apr 27 '22 at 12:37
  • yes, that would be a wise idea. I will see if I can do it on that server by myself. – usernamekiran Apr 28 '22 at 18:26

2 Answers2

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Check the full names of the files and do something like

ln -s /dev/null .err
ln -s /dev/null .out
echo "Warning: .err and .out are symlinks from /dev/null" > README
Walter A
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0

Original throwaway comment now posted as an answer.

The day you stop generating the logs is the day that you need them...

My suggestion would be create a dated daily pair of files (KiranBOT1_YYYYMMDD.err, and KiranBOT1_YYYYMMDD.out), and use logrotate to remove after (say) one week?

Andrew
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