Logrotate cheat-sheet
It’s probably installed by default but if not most distribution’s package managers refer to it as logrotate so installing it is pretty straight forward
apt install logrotate
dnf install logrotate
pacman -S logrotate
The main configuration file is:
/etc/logrotate.conf
With (by default) additional configuration files being loaded from the directory:
/etc/logrotate.d
Command to debug configuration file
logrotate -d "{:PathToConfigFile:}"
Command to force run configuration file in verbose mode
logrotate -vf "{:PathToConfigFile:}"
The following is an example configuration for rotating one log file:
/var/log/{:AppName:}.log {
missingok
compress
notifempty
copytruncate
}
The following is an example configuration for rotating logs file using a wildcard:
/var/log/{:AppName:}/* {
rotate 30
daily
missingok
olddir "/var/log/{:AppName:}/archive"
dateext
compress
}
Common configuration options
The following are some common configuration options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| rotate {:NumberToKeep:} | Keep {:NumberToKeep:} amount of rotated logs |
| daily / weekly / monthly | Rotate logs regularly |
| size {:Size:} | Rotate logs when they hit {:Size:} in bytes. Can be set as (kilo/mega/giga)bytes with k/M/G |
| missingok | Do not error if log file doesn’t exist |
| olddir “{:DirectoryPath:}” | Places rotated logs into {:DirectoryPath:} |
| dateext | Use date extension in YYYYMMDD format (e.g: 20380120) instead of number format |
| notifempty | Do not rotate if log is empty |
| compress /nocompress | Compress or not do compress rotated log files |
| delaycompress | When using compress will delay compression of the log being rotated until the following rotation |
| copytruncate | Do not delete existing log file, copy file for rotation and truncate contents of existing file |
| create {:Mode:} {:Owner:} {:Group:} | Specify the permissions octal, owner and group when creating a new log file |
| createolddir {:Mode:} {:Owner:} {:Group:} | Create the old directory if it does not exist and set the permissions octal, owner and group to those specified |