How do I prune asl.db with "syslog -p"? It doesn't seem to work.

Question

Has anyone has any luck pruning asl.db using the the syslog utility with the “-p” command under Leopard?
I’ve shut down syslogd, and I can search the active database using “-k” and an expression:
$ sudo syslog -db -k Sender sshd
Fri Sep 19 11:02:59 unknown sshd[1405] <Notice>: USER_PROCESS: 1410 ttys001
Fri Sep 19 17:25:28 unknown sshd[1405] <Notice>: DEAD_PROCESS: 1410 ttys001
Tue Sep 30 10:57:31 unknown sshd[9397] <Notice>: USER_PROCESS: 9402 ttys001
Wed Oct 1 17:36:46 unknown sshd[9397] <Notice>: DEAD_PROCESS: 9402 ttys001
According to the syslog man page, I should be able to able to prune the active database with the following:
$ sudo syslog -db -p Sender sshd
But, what I get instead is:
prune operation failed: can't contact syslogd server
The man page for syslog says, “If -db is given without a database file name, syslog prunes the active database file. This may only be done if the syslogd server is not running.” So, I shouldn’t need to have syslogd running.
But, just to make sure, I started syslog again, and I get a different error message:
$ sudo syslog -db -p Sender sshd
no queries for pruning
Same thing if I remove the “-db” option.
$ sudo syslog -p Sender sshd
no queries for pruning
There are definitely queries because they show up with the “-k” option.
If anyone has an experience with this they can share, I would appreciate it. I could just be missing something.
Thank you.

Answer 1

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