monitoring contents of a logfile with a daily changing filename

[Ian Diddams]

xymon 4.3.17 / 4.3.28 /  4.3.15 / 4.3.12 /    (multiple servers)
centos 6 & 7
For a client Ive been asked to set up a reasonably simple LOG file check in their various xymon installations.

Each client to be checked has daily changing messages filenames (via rsyslog.conf).  The filename for today is for example
/var/log/external/<client hostname>/messages-20180815.log

i.e. it is always in /var/log/external/<client hostname>/ with the formaltted filename of messages-<YYYYMMDD>.log
so presumably via the xymon server's analysis.cfg and client-local.cfg I have to be able to tell xymon server to use the logfile with naming convention of 

/var/log/external/<client hostname>/messages-<YYYYMMDD>.log

any ideas how to manage thiis?

the only other way I can think to do it is to have a cron that automagically resets a softlink of eg /var/log/messages to the daily log, run at midnight on every client - but that's just another level of cludginess.that requires some overseeing to ensure every client "works".  This really needs to be done centrally.

Summary:  logfile paths have two quasi-random elements - the client hostname in the path, and the date in the logfile name
didds

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