Why doesnt "tail" work to truncate log files?
ubuntu
Solution
You are overwriting the file before `tail` even starts to read it. The shell processes the `>` redirect operator, by clearing out the file first. Then it runs `tail` which has no data to read.
You can solve this by using a temporary file:
tail -2000 logfile.txt >logfile.tmp
mv logfile.tmp logfile.txt
Problem
I'm trying to manage my log file size using a cron script. I basically want to delete all but the last 2000 lines of the log file every night. I'm trying to run this command, but it seems to be emptying the entire file instead of doing what I want: tail -2000 logfile.txt > logfile.txt Does anyone know why this isn't working and/or how to accomplish what I want? Thanks!