Logrotate basics

By default, logrotate runs once a day, using a cron scheduler from /etc/cron.daily/

# ls /etc/cron.daily/
logrotate

Configuration files for logrotate:

• default configuration /etc/logrotate.conf:

$ cat /etc/logrotate.conf
# see "man logrotate" for details
# rotate log files weekly
weekly

# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
rotate 4

# create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones
create

# use date as a suffix of the rotated file
dateext

# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed
#compress

# RPM packages drop log rotation information into this directory
include /etc/logrotate.d

# system-specific logs may be also be configured here.

• custom configurations in /etc/logrotate.d:

# Example
/var/log/thinkhel.log {
    rotate 3
    missingok
    notifempty
    compress
    size 50k
    daily
}

• rotate – log retention
• missingok – do not issue an error message if the file is missing
• notifempty – do not rotate if the file is empty
• compress – log files are compressed with gzip

To force a logrotate run to test configuration:

sudo logrotate -f -v /etc/logrotate.d/thinkel