The log files and mail messages generated by the realtime data handling quickly build up, especially with multiple sites and hourly transfers. Thus there is a script which tries to purge the older output automatically, rotate-spools. This script currently handles two things: the rotation of the realtime mail folder and the removal of older log directories. The crontab on mead contains this entry to run rotate-spools once per day:

# Once a day, rotate the spool info
5 0 * * * /h/atd/iss/bin/rotate-spools name2004

For the mail folder, the script renames the current realtime folder by adding a suffix with the current date and creates an empty folder in its place. Some IMAP email clients may need some creative prodding to recognize the change in folders. If you need to access one of the dated folders, you may need to subscribe to it first. If there are more than three folders with the date suffix, then all but the most recent three such folders are removed. Thus at any time there will be only the last three days of realtime email messages avilable.

The log files produced by the batch plotting are placed in dated subdirectories when created, so all the rotate-spools script needs to do is remove all but the most recent three such directories.

If the rotate-spools script actually changes anything, especially if it removes any folders or directories, then it will produce output and that output will be emailed to the iss account.