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Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:28:24 -0600 (CST)
From: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com>
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Cc: 
Subject: Re: Simple command to reset / clear all logs?
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> From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org  Thu Jan 13 01:26:33 2011
> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 01:20:14 -0600
> From: Adam Vande More <amvandemore@gmail.com>
> To: Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene@gmail.com>
> Cc: questions <questions@freebsd.org>, Bernt Hansson <bernt@bah.homeip.net>
> Subject: Re: Simple command to reset / clear all logs?
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Redd Vinylene 
> <reddvinylene@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Will the logs automatically create themselves? I mean, I picture I have 
> > to manually touch a lotta them in order to avoid "cannot find" error 
> > messages?
> >
>
> Please don't top post.
>
> do something like this:
>
> shutdown now rm /var/log/* exit
>
> upon reentering multiuser mode, each logging service will create it's new 
> file.

FALSE TO FACT, with regard to any/all files that syslogd(8) uses,
_unless_ syslogd is invoked with the '-C' option.  

Quoting from the manpage:
    "For security reasons, syslogd will not append to log files that do not
     exist (unless -C option is specified); therefore, they must be created
     manually before running syslogd."


>        Typically if a service is running and you delete the log from it, 
> the service will not like it.  You can HUP the service to have it restart 
> logging, but you'd have to do it manually for each log you deleted.
>