Weechat: Option to gzip log files.

[ddan39]

Just noticed my weechat logs are getting quite big, and figured I should gzip them to save space, but then thought maybe we can have weechat write to the files gzipped?

But is this even possible? By the nature of compression, I have a feeling it would not be, unless output is buffered and written in chunks... but I have no idea how gzip actually works :(

and on that note, maybe there is a better lib/algorithm for compressing a text stream?

Please & Thanks :)

[HelixSpiral]

If it isn't possible to gzip current logs, maybe just gzipping old ones would be fine. If you have logs set to rotate by day, week or month. When a new log file is made it can gzip the old ones.

[nyuszika7h]

It should keep more than one ungzipped log file per buffer though, especially if logs are rotated by day. Maybe it could be a configuration option.

[highflyer77]

Maybe just have weechat read the compressed log files using: zcat like other applications do.

Using LOGROTATE(8) would simply handle this job. Logrotate is run as a daily cron job, and a user can set it up however they like.

[NoSuck]

With ~500 MB of log data, I am interested in this possibility but would be concerned about losing the convenience of readily-available, universally viewable logs.

[nyuszika7h]

Well, there is zcat and zgrep, and it could probably automatically (un-)gzip on next start if you change the option.

Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[jeaye]

I have 2.0 GB worth of logs that're causing me some space issues right now, but I can't sacrifice the ability to easily search through them with /grep or similar plugins. Having weechat automatically compress these in a way that can be read via weechat would be superb, so this gets my 👍.

In the meantime, a fork of the grep plugin could likely be made to consider rotated, compressed files in its searching. That requires not only a custom plugin, but also a cron/systemd job for logrotating.