how to processi log files before rotation.

[Clarence Brown]

2 questions ...

1. Where is the "right", or "standard" place to save shell 
scripts that I want to use for administrative, or any other 
tasks. Some place on the path I suppose.

2. I'd like to process my maillog and maillog.*.gz files just before 
the maillog it is rotated into maillog.1.gz and maillog.7.gz is 
discarded. I've written a couple of simple scripts to process the 
files and report the number total number of messages blocked 
with the DNSBL filters for today and the last 7 days, as well 
as the numbers for each of the DNSBL lists that I use. It also 
processes the maillog file and produces a total number blocked 
for each user and emails that and a list of the messages blocked 
to that user so that the user can check to make sure that they are 
not missing "good" email. 

I'd like to schedule the DNSBL status scripts to run every night 
just before the maillog rotation happens. I've found where in 
the /etc/crontab the log file rotation is scheduled, but I don't 
know if there is a way to ensure that my status scripts start, and 
run to completion before the logfile rotation starts. 

As a test I added a couple of  lines to run every 2 minutes to see 
what order they executed in and found that the order of the lines 
in crontab doesn't guarantee order of execution ... or at least completion 
of the commands. The commands I added were more or less as follows:

*/2   *   *   *   *   root   /root/dnsblstat
*/2   *   *   *   *   root   mail -s "test line 1" my_email_addr
*/2   *   *   *   *   root   mail -s "test line 2" my_email_addr

What I found was that the dnsblstat never completed before the two
following email commands, and sometimes the "test line 2" email 
came in before the "test line 1". 

As a brute force approach, I could schedule the dnsblstat to run some 
number of minutes before midnight, to make sure it completed before 
the log files were rotated "out from under it", but then I might miss a 
few discards, and I wanted to show each user every email that was 
discarded.

A different approach would be to process the maillog.1.gz file after 
it is created, and to collect statistics for today and the last 6 days 
instead of today and the last 7 days. 

I sure this is a standard problem with a "correct" solution, so how 
do you guys handle it?

Thanks, Cla. (sorry for the verbosity)