VERY LARGE log file "stderr" in "FileMaker Server/Logs"

[jasonwood]

I have a file in Library/FileMaker Server/Logs called "stderr" and it is 3.23GB.

 

My client has one that is 450GB.

 

Mostly it seems to be very detailed errors relating to ScriptMaster bulk email sending.

 

Can I delete this file and system will just create another one?

 

Can I set it up so it delete's older entries to keep the file size reasonable?

[webko]

Yes you can delete this file and the system will create another.

 

And personally, I'd use a cron job with AppleScript once a day to rename the file to a date stamp, and clean up any more than X days old... I like a tidy file system

[jasonwood]

Yes you can delete this file and the system will create another.

 

And personally, I'd use a cron job with AppleScript once a day to rename the file to a date stamp, and clean up any more than X days old... I like a tidy file system

 

The file is normally edited every 5 minutes when a schedule runs. After I dragged the log file to the desktop, the system did not recreate the file. When I put it back in the Logs folder, it resumes editing every 5 minutes.

 

Any idea why it wouldn't recreate the file?

[webko]

What about a blank file of the same name?

[jasonwood]

I dragged the "stderr" file from Logs to my desktop. Then I created a new blank file with the same name and permissions and put it in Logs.

 

It didn't work. Then I noticed that the original file, even though it was moved to the desktop, was still receiving new log entries.

 

I tried putting it back in Logs and renaming it, thinking that renaming might be another way to break the link, but no such luck.

 

I guess my next step is to delete the stderr file, and hopefully then it will create a new one?

[dansmith65]

In my experience, that files contains the error output of a system script, when run by FileMaker Server. Unless your ScriptMaster script is performing a system script, I don't know why it would have errors logged there. If this is the case, you could possibly re-write your ScriptMaster function to pipe error output to /dev/nul (that's what it is on GNU/Linux, not sure it's the same on Mac).

 

A more important question is: what is being logged?

 

Here is an option for keeping that log file from growing out of hand: http://serverfault.com/questions/352942/equivalent-of-logrotate-on-osx

 

How big is stdout?  Is anything logged there?

[dysong3]

Thanks for this topic.  This resolved my issue with a "stderr" file of over 50 GB