[NTLUG:Discuss] Writing to /var/log/messages ?

[David Simmons, PE]

To bring some finality to this thread, I'd like to 'splain the reason
and solution:

Initial problem:  OpenBSD SAMBA file-server for Windows/Mac environment
- recent changes in how Word/Excel 'clean-up' and/or access the SAMBA
server have been leaving the temp files (listed here for keyword
searches for solution of same problem:  ~*.tmp, ~*.doc, ~*.xls, A*.doc &
A*.xls - with zero filesizes, ~$*) from these programs behind - they're
starting to pile-up - gotta do something.  And I wanted the final result
to show up in the /var/log/messages file so that I can keep tabs on how
well it's doing?!.

Initial solution/thought:  Create a CRON job that searches through area
and nightly cleans them up.  The find command is your friend.  The
logger command is your friend for writing to /var/log/messages.  Server
is running an older version of the OS, and find was experiencing some
memory leak/allocation errors - uh,oh, now what?

Final Solution/script:

It was suggested to use the command 'find2perl' that converts the find
command & arguments into perl code (very cool BTW)!  The following
script was repeated in a shell file replacing the variable $SEARCH with
the above listed search strings:

find2perl /shared -name "$SEARCH" -print -exec rm "{}" \; | perl
2>/dev/null | wc -l | xargs logger -p daemon.notice Number of $SEARCH
files found:

Hope this helps someone, it has sure helped me - thanks to those whom
have helped!

dave