Logrotate

Resources

Logrotate is a tool to periodically rotate (archive), delete, and optionally compress and/or mail historic log files. Logrotate ships with, and is typically invoked by a /etc/cron.daily cron job.

USE flags

USE flags for app-admin/logrotate Rotates, compresses, and mails system logs

`+cron`	Installs cron file
`acl`	Installs acl support
`selinux`	Installs Security Enhanced Linux support
`verify-sig`	Verify upstream signatures on distfiles

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-10-08 12:50 More information about USE flags

Installation

Emerge

root #emerge --ask app-admin/logrotate

Introduction

Logrotate can be used to ensure logs are retained based on a defined policy. This policy can be based on file age, size, and number of total similar files.

Proper log storage is important, for a variety of reasons:

Readability - If logs are disorganized, they become harder to use.
Security - Logs are essential for incident responses, poorly organized and incomplete logs can make this more difficult or impossible.
Integrity - If logs are managed poorly, data could be lost or overwritten.

Configuration

Files

/etc/logrotate.conf - The daemon's configuration file.
/etc/logrotate.d - The directory containing configuration files installed by other services.

Configure daily rotation

By default, logrotate is configured to rotate logs weekly, this can be changed to daily rotation with:

FILE /etc/logrotate.confSwitch to daily log rotation

#weekly
daily

Tip
The default rotate count is 4, this should be adjusted if daily rotation is used, unless only 4 days of logs are desired.

Tip
To schedule removal of old logs add the line maxage N to the config file, where N is the number of days after which the log file will be deleted.

Note
Leaving the logrotate script in /etc/cron.daily is recommended, as weekly configuration will stop logrotate from doing anything more than once a week, despite being called more often. This is especially useful when different components need to be rotated more or less often.

Portage logrotate module

To rotate log files created by portage:

FILE /etc/logrotate.d/portage

# /etc/logrotate.d/portage

/var/log/emerge-fetch.log {
    createolddir 755 portage portage
    olddir /var/log/portage/old
    su portage portage
    copytruncate
    missingok
}

/var/log/emerge.log {
    createolddir 755 portage portage
    olddir /var/log/portage/old
    su portage portage
    copytruncate
    missingok
}

/var/log/portage/*.log {
    su portage portage
    missingok
    nocreate
}

Note
This module inherits configuration from /etc/logrotate.conf.

Note
copytruncate will copy the file contents, then empty the file. This is useful when permissions prevent new files from being created.

Usage

Logrotate is typically called by a cron job, but can be manually used with:

root #logrotate --verbose /etc/logrotate.conf

Tip
Rotation can be forced with --force.