Following the move, whatever service is writing to the file will need to be restarted as well, for example: system("/etc/init.d/syslog restart") == 0 or ... I've seen situations where the application would continue writing to the old file until the service was restarted. Odd but true, and it might explain some of what you're seeing. If you can, check /etc/logrotate.conf or any of the files in /etc/logrotate.d, and you'll probably see where certain services are being restarted following the rotation.

Thanks for the idea. It could be the issue, but Perl is what is creating these files. They are snapshots of the real log files. The script will run, creating vpnwarn.out. Upon next execution, after Perl has exited, it fails with Can't unlink file: No such file or directory at ./vpnwarn.pl line 28. (see reply to earlier post). If the previous instance of Perl is mucking with it, let me know.

Also, there is no logrotate here. It's cygwin on a Doze box.

Monger