How to empty (“truncate”) a file on linux that already exists and is protected in someway?

Question

I have a file called error.log on my server that I need to frequently truncate. I have rw permissions for the file. Opening the file in vi > deleting all content > saving wo

Answer 1

This will be enough to set the file size to 0:

> error.log

Answer 2

You can try also:

echo -n > /my/file

Answer 3

You can also use function truncate

$truncate -s0 yourfile

if permission denied, use sudo

$sudo truncate -s0 yourfile

Help/Manual: man truncate

tested on ubuntu Linux

Answer 4

I do like this: cp /dev/null file

Answer 5

false|tee fileToTruncate

may work as well

Answer 6

Since sudo will not work with redirection >, I like the tee command for this purpose

echo "" | sudo tee fileName