Log file missing old data

[Friend]

I have been monitoring a log file for one of my websites probably for a year now. It seems like everytime I check it, it is missing data. Last time I checked it, it only had about a weeks worth of log entries. Do webhosts refresh their logs periodically and erase old entries? Anyone know how I can avoid this so I can have complete logs on the site?

[rogerd]

Log files can get huge very quickly, and web hosts often purge old data on a regular basis.

I'd start by contacting your host and finding out what their policy is. A common solution is to create a cron job (Linux servers) to zip the old data before purging it. You can periodically download the compressed files if you are short on server space.

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[HelenDev]

I had a similar experience with my hosting company in that the logs only appeared to go up to the last time I checked them in that particular month.

I complained to them and they said that the log programme had to be 'run' in order for it to get the logs from the raw file. They advised that I should view the log report - thus 'running' the program on the last day of each month. I never remembered to do this and kept complaining, and now it doesn't happen any more - I guess they fixed it.

[Friend]

HelenDev, I thought that I had noticed the same thing i.e. that my new logs would cutoff whenever I had downloaded the last log. How would the server know to refresh logs at that point?

But I did notice that there is a zipped file on the site, and after downloading it I can see about 5 months of data.

[HelenDev]

How would the server know to refresh logs at that point?

I'm not really sure how it works, but when I asked the hosting company to get back my missing data, they did so without any problems. So perhaps it is just the graphical logs program that needed refreshing (in my case Webalizer), and the actual raw log file was fine all along? I must confess that I know very little about servers and such like.