...

DESCRIPTION

     Rotate tries to rotate the target files with given suffixes (or ``.old''
     if omitted), and creates an empty one.

     -g group
             Specify a group.

     -o owner
             Specify an owner.

     -m mode
             Specify an alternate mode. The default mode is set to 0666 as
             modified by the current umask(2).

     -n      Print what rotate will do, but does nothing.

     -v      Verbose mode. Show various messages.

     -Z      Compress target file by compress(1).

     -z      Same as -Z but using gzip(1).

     Upon successful completion a value of 0 is returned.  Otherwise, a value
     of 1 is returned.

     Rotate is useful to rotate syslog messages, for example:

           rotate -o root -g wheel -m 640 /var/log/messages 2 1 0

     To rotate uucp logs with ``.old''

           rotate -o uucp -g uucp -m 640 -z /var/spool/uucp/Log

     You can also rotate log files with date specific suffix:

           rotate -o root -m 600 /var/log/maillog `date +%Y%m%d`

SEE ALSO

     install(1), chgrp(1), chmod(1), compress(1), cp(1), gzip(1), mv(1),
     umask(2), chown(8)

BUGS

     When rotate rotates ``foo'' to ``foo.suffix'' , ``foo.Z'' and ``foo.gz''
     are also rotated if exist, even though you do not want it.

HISTORY

     The rotate was written by Ikuo Nakagawa.

4.4BSD                          March 10, 1996                          4.4BSD