Archiving/Clearing scheduler.log File Query

I'd like to implement a script which archives the scheduler.log file to a designated folder then clears it down ready for the new day's log messages. I've followed the suggestions from pages 296/297 of the User's Guide and Job Automation Language (JAL) Reference manual and incorporated them into a JAL script show below. The FileCopy part of the script works fine but the FileDelete fails - presumably as the file is still opened by the scheduler. Is there any way of closing the scheduler.log file temporarily to enable it to be cleared down? Thanks.

Dim run_date, date
Dim run_time, time
Dim file_date, datetime
Dim copy_path, string
Dim date_part, string
Today(run_date)
Now(run_time)
DateTime(run_date,run_time,file_date)
Format(file_date,"yyyymmdd",date_part)
Concat("E:\SoftTree24x7\24x7\LogArchive\scheduler-",date_part,copy_path)
ConCat(copy_path,"-",copy_path)
Format(file_date,"hhmmss",date_part)
ConCat(copy_path,date_part,copy_path)
ConCat(copy_path,".log",copy_path)
FileCopy "E:\SoftTree24x7\24x7\scheduler.log", copy_path
FileDelete "E:\SoftTree24x7\24x7\scheduler.log"

Please try renaming the file and then deleting the renamed file a minute later using a different job

Thanks for the quick response. The rename also fails "An error occurred while executing automation script Line 1:Line 16:Error renaming file."

Are you sure this is a file locking issues? Please try giving yourself full explicit permissions for 24x7 folder.

I'm pretty sure this is a locking issue; I've granted Full Control to the 24x7 folder and the problem persists. If I try renaming the file using Windows Explorer I get a "The action can't be completed because the file is open in Java(TM) Platform SE binary - Close the file and try again" message. Thanks.

Well, I've done some testing and I'm observing the same behavior. I found out that the scheduler.log file can not be deleted because it's locked in read/write mode, but the contents of the file can be truncated to a zero size effectively restarting the log, which is what you are after, right? There are no built-in commands in 24x7 to set file length or truncate contents, but I've found a site offering tons of examples for truncating file content. Please take a look here http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Truncate_a_file
Perhaps you can use one of these examples and create a small command line utility that you can call from the job

Last edited by SysOp on Wed Jun 19, 2013 7:57 am; edited 1 time in total

I'll give that a go, many thanks for your help.

I adapted the C# example from rosettacode.org but the resulting app still throws an error:

E:\TMS_IT\Batch\Command>TruncateFile.exe "E:\SoftTree24x7\24x7\scheduler.log" 0
TruncateFile: The process cannot access the file 'E:\SoftTree24x7\24x7\scheduler.log' because it is being used by another process.
E:\TMS_IT\Batch\Command>

Could you raise this as a bug please. We would like to keep a log history but as it stands the log file can only be cleared manually. Thanks.

Let me try the C# example and tweak it to work. If we can truncate the log file using Notepad, we should be able to do the same programmatically too

I haven't paid much attention to when it actually happens, but on Windows the 24x7 service can archive the log when you stop & start it, e.g. to scheduler-20130623-165844.log Might be an option?

If stopping and starting the scheduler requires manual intervention then no, what I'm looking for is a means of archiving and clearing the log file that can be run by the scheduler itself. Thanks.

Here is the code that will truncate the file. You should specify Read-write share mode when opening the file otherwise your C# program try to use the default mode which is to open file in exclusive access mode and that will throw file-in-use exception

Code:

using System;
using System.IO;

namespace TruncateFile
{
internal class Program
{
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
if (args.Length < 1)
throw new ArgumentException("File name not specified. Usage Truncatefile <file>");
TruncateFile(args[0]);
}

private static void TruncateFile(string path)
{
if (!File.Exists(path))
throw new ArgumentException("No file found at specified path.", path);

using (var fileStream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite, FileShare.ReadWrite))
{
fileStream.SetLength(0);
}
}
}
}

Works perfectly, many thanks for your help. Regards.