Keep your log folders tidy with movelogs.exe

Do you sometimes need to keep a log folder tidy? Well, I do. All the time. We have some webservers who create an awful lot of logs, and since I didn't really find a Windows replacement for Linux' logrotate I tried to write a batchfile to get rid of logfiles that were older than a certain number of days. Eventually I gave up and decided it was easier to write it in c#. I suppose powershell would have been even better, but who cares as long as the job gets done?
I suppose I'm not the only sysadmin out there who might need this from time to time, so here it is: movelogs.exe.

It will search a folder for files with a given extension, then apply another extension of your choice to these files providing they are older than a given number of days.

For instance the following command and parameters:

movelogs.exe c:\temp .log .oldlog 30
will search the folder c:\temp for all files ending with .log and attach .oldlog to the filename if the file is older than 30 days.

Personally I call movelogs from a small batchscript who will delete the .oldlog files after movelogs.exe is done. In other situations you might want to move them to a external dump-folder or something else.

Example myservice_deletelogs.bat:
movelogs.exe c:\temp\myservice .log .oldlog 30
del /q c:\temp\myservice\*.oldlog

I have provideed the executable, but if you want to compile it yourself - here's the c# source (should compile without problems in Visual Studio).


using System;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
namespace movelogs
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            if (args.Length == 4)
            {
                string strFolder = args[0];
                string strExtension = args[1];
                string strNewExtension = args[2];
                System.DateTime datetimeNow = DateTime.Now;
                try
                {
                    int intFileRenameAge = Int16.Parse(args[3]);
                    string[] strFileList = Directory.GetFiles(@strFolder);
                    foreach (string strFileName in strFileList)
                    {
                        FileInfo fileinfoMyFile = new FileInfo(strFileName);
                        System.DateTime datetimeMyFileDate = fileinfoMyFile.LastWriteTime;
                        TimeSpan timespanFileAge = datetimeNow - datetimeMyFileDate;
                        if (strFileName.EndsWith(strExtension))
                        {
                            int intFileAge = timespanFileAge.Days;
                            if (intFileAge > intFileRenameAge)
                            {
                                Console.WriteLine("{0} is older than {1} days", strFileName, intFileRenameAge);
                                try
                                {
                                    File.Move(strFileName, strFileName + strNewExtension);
                                }
                                catch
                                {
                                    Console.WriteLine("Problem moving {0}. Possible reasons: file in use or permissions.", strFileName);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
                catch (DirectoryNotFoundException)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Problem opening folder: {0}", strFolder);
                }
                catch (FormatException)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("Wrong format for number of days. Try a number");
                }
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("movelogs.exe will scan a folder for files with a given extension who are older than a given number of days and then add a new exension them.");
                Console.WriteLine("v1.0 kjetil.pettersson@gmail.com\n");
                Console.WriteLine("Usage: ");
                Console.WriteLine("movelogs.exe [foldername] [extension] [new extension] [age in days]");
                Console.WriteLine("Example:");
                Console.WriteLine("movelogs.exe c:\\temp .log .oldlog 30");
            }
        }
    }
}