Compressing IIS logs

Hi,

I want to compress my IIS logs into zip format on a routine basis.

Check out this URL I want to do exactly the same thing but dont want to pay 56 dollars for it.

http://www.softshell.net/

Has anyone come aross any good batch scripts or other free programs that do this sought of thing.

Thx

If it was easy, SoftShell wouldn't be in business... there's a reason it costs $56...

Yes thanks for stating the obvious - I was trying to get opinions to see if anyone had come across any other sort of software so I can compare.

Do you have any suggestions?

I only had a short glance at the software - but from that, it seems to be nothing special. If you think it is, point out the "special" feature please, i can´t see it.

It IS easy to write such a program. I could do it in a few hours, but the sum of my hourly rates would exceed the $56 for sure

first alternative:
- Get a command line version of a zip program ("PKZIP")
- write a script using (WSH, PERL, your fav. scripting lang.) that checks the logs for not being used for some time and compresses them using pkzip
- start this from your "task scheduler" once per day...

another suggestion:
are you on an NT system? even easier: activate the transparent folder compression. (you won´t get .zip files then though, but the logs will be compressed and still available unmodified so statistics programs can still use them).

and another one:
"logrotate" is a free program that does this on linux. search google if it is available for windows too. If not, but you know a little programming, you should be able to port it yourself.

The question is: Why do you want to compress them? What functionality do you want to achieve?
is it
- giving your customers the ability to download old logs zipped
- saving hard disk space
- archiving your logs so you can re-read them in a few weeks / months / ...
?

M.

Hi,

Great suggestions I will check out PKzip etc and should be able to write the script in PHP.

I want to do this for all the reasons you give, my logs were 13gb Until I went though by hand and compressed them in all into monthly zip files.

The files need to be Zip as my log analyser reads zip files.

Cheers