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DOS Script To Cap Log Files

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I have this common problem where my servers generates about 5-6 megs of log file every day filling up the disk, and following dos script to delete old logs have been quite handy

:: Iterate files alphabetically at specified folder and keep a maximum of N to 
:: avoid filling disk space. Called by run.bat
:: This script takes 3 arguments
 off
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

set FOLDER=%1
set FILEPREFIX=%2
set LIMIT=%3

echo Accessing %FOLDER%
cd %FOLDER%

set /a COUNT=0
for /f "tokens=*" %%f in ('dir /b /a-d-h-s /o-n %FILEPREFIX%*') do (
          set /a COUNT=COUNT+1
          if !COUNT! GTR %LIMIT% (
                        echo deleting %%f
                        del /f /q %%f   
                )
        )
endlocal

I place the script above in C:filecleanerdeletefiles.bat. This script iterates a folder alphabetically and keep only specified amount of files. I then created a second script to be called by task scheduler

:: Called by task scheduler. This script calls deletefiles.bat over each file path prefix
::
:: Example:
:: deletefiles.bat c:logrotate-test access.log 3 
:: means keep maximum 3 files (sorted alphabetically) starting with access.log
 off

deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" catalina 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" commons-daemon 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" host-manager 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" localhost 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" manager 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" tomcat6-stderr 7
deletefiles.bat "C:apache-tomcat-6.0.35" tomcat6-stdout 7

I put this script in C:filecleanerrun.bat. As you can see it calls deletefiles.bat several times to clean my tomcat log files. The script uses following arguments:

  1. The folder where the log files exist
  2. The prefix of the log files
  3. How many latest files should be kept

It’s important to note this will only work if the files alphabetical ordering implies their age. This typically works best if the files pattern has a yyyy-MM-dd format (or similar at the end):

stdout.2013-12-04.log
stdout.2013-12-05.log
stdout.2013-12-06.log
stdout.2013-12-07.log

Finally to run this automatically every 3.30am in the morning I created a task scheduler with following action:

filecleaner