I cannot clear syslog but I can remove it?

Why doesnt sudo /dev/null > /var/log/syslog and sudo > /var/log/syslog work, while sudo rm /var/log/syslog works?!

5 Answers

truncate -s 0 /var/log/syslog

working for me on 18.04. Got it from here:

There are two main problems.

One problem is that /dev/null isn't a command, so running sudo /dev/null can't succeed. You need sudo [a command]. In this case, you probably want sudo cat /dev/null.

The other problem is that > separates things into a full command on the left and a file on the right, so the full command on the left is sudo cat /dev/null, and sudo's job is now done once it runs cat /dev/null.

That means that the > is running as your user, not under sudo. Your user doesn't have permission to write to /var/log/syslog, so this will fail.

You need some way to run the entire line cat /dev/null > /var/log/syslog under sudo. Well, > isn't a command or anything. It's something the shell handles, so you need to have a shell handle that redirection symbol properly. You can do that with sh's -c option: sh -c 'cat /dev/null > /var/log/syslog'.

Now that you have everything together as one command, you can have sudo run the entire thing:

sudo sh -c 'cat /dev/null > /var/log/syslog'

The command you are thinking of is probably

> /var/log/syslog

Nothing else is needed. In bash and other shells, the > will immediately truncate the file, emptying it. However, when you run this:

sudo /dev/null > /var/log/syslog

The system is attempting to run /dev/null as a command and you will get this error:

sudo: /dev/null: command not found

Note, however, that despite this, /var/log/syslog has actually been emptied because, as I said above, the > is enough, no command is necessary.

truncate: The truncation process basically removes all the contents of the file. It does not remove the file itself, but it leaves it on the disk as a zero byte file.

Clear ALL Content of Syslog with:

sudo truncate -s 0 /var/log/syslog

Another way to do this is

sudo tee </dev/null /var/log/syslog 

Or if you prefer a useless use of cat:

cat /dev/null | sudo tee /var/log/syslog