If you administer Linux systems, it’s a pretty good idea to keep an eye on the logs. A handy tool that parses your system’s logs and sends you an email report is well known logwatch. By default it sends daily log reports. But to me this is too often. I want weekly reports.
This is how I achieved this on Centos 5.
If they’re not already installed, install logwatch and perl-DateManip
sudo su - yum install logwatch perl-DateManip
Add a few options to logwatch.conf (I also like my output formatted in html)
echo "Range = between -7 days and -1 days" >> /etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf echo "Output = html" >> /etc/logwatch/conf/logwatch.conf
By default logwatch installs itself in /etc/cron.daily, you should move it to /etc/cron.weekly
mv /etc/cron.daily/0logwatch /etc/cron.weekly
You can now run a test logwatch and check if it arrives:
/etc/cron.weekly/0logwatch
For those folks who do not have a full OS installed on RHEL5 / Centos5,
you need a data manipulation perl module to get the ‘-7 days’ to work.
install Date::Manip by running one of the cmds below and you will be all set.
cpan -i ‘Date::Manip’
perl -MCPAN -e ‘install Date::Manip’
thanks @drye, found this article helpful.
-Sumanth
Thanks for the tips.
Works in Debian (with libdate-manip-perl package)
Thanks, I used this.
Thanks for the clear directions! Sumanth’s comments were helpful too.
Thanks, it works good for me.
Tested with Logwatch 7.3.6 and CentOS release 6.3
Works on Ubuntu 12.04.x too (with libdate-manip-perl, of course).
very usefull thanks a lot and i agree this is clearly enough
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Thanks! In the report it still says “period is day”. I assume this has been hardwritten, right?