LinuxQuestions.org - Logs are not rotated

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Logs are not rotated

Hey all,

Running Slack 10, kernel 2.4.28 on my laptop. I noticed that my logs are not rotating. /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog are over 1Mb now, and the starting date is when I did a reinstall last year November.
After reading several posts, I checked the following and couldn't find anything wrong:

* No logs have passed the 2G limit, which would stop all logging.

Code:

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon# ps ax | grep syslogd

  69 ?        Ss    0:00 /usr/sbin/syslogd

 1873 pts/1    S+    0:00 grep syslogd

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon#

Code:

cat /var/lib/logrotate/status

logrotate state -- version 2

"/var/log/cron" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/debug" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/maillog" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/messages" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/secure" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/spooler" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/syslog" 2005-1-4

"/var/log/wtmp" 2005-1-4

So all logs were 'attempted' to be rotated
When I start logrotate from console I get

Code:

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon# logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.conf

reading config file /etc/logrotate.conf

including /etc/logrotate.d

reading config file syslog

reading config info for /var/log/cron /var/log/debug /var/log/maillog /var/log/m

essages /var/log/secure /var/log/spooler /var/log/syslog 

reading config info for /var/log/wtmp 



Handling 2 logs



rotating pattern: /var/log/cron /var/log/debug /var/log/maillog /var/log/message

s /var/log/secure /var/log/spooler /var/log/syslog  weekly (4 rotations)

empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed

considering log /var/log/cron

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/debug

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/maillog

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/messages

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/secure

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/spooler

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/syslog

  log does not need rotating

not running shared postrotate script, since no logs were rotated



rotating pattern: /var/log/wtmp  monthly (1 rotations)

empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed

considering log /var/log/wtmp

  log does not need rotating

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon#

Code:

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon# less /etc/logrotate.conf

# /etc/logrotate.conf

#

# logrotate is designed to ease administration of systems that generate large

# numbers of log files.  It allows automatic rotation, compression, removal, and

# mailing of log files.  Each log file may be handled daily, weekly, monthly, or

# when it grows too large.

#

# logrotate is normally run daily from root's crontab.

#

# For more details, see "man logrotate".



# rotate log files weekly:

weekly



# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs:

rotate 4



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

create



# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed:

#compress



# some packages install log rotation information in this directory:

include /etc/logrotate.d



# Rotate /var/log/wtmp:

/var/log/wtmp {

    monthly

    create 0664 root utmp

    rotate 1

}



# Note that /var/log/lastlog is not rotated.  This is intentional, and it should

# not be.  The lastlog file is a database, and is also a sparse file that takes

# up much less space on the drive than it appears.



# system-specific logs may be also be configured below:



root@leon-fyg:/home/leon#

Code:

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon# cat /etc/logrotate.d/syslog 

/var/log/cron /var/log/debug /var/log/maillog /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/spooler /var/log/syslog {

    sharedscripts

    postrotate

        /bin/kill -HUP `cat /var/run/syslogd.pid 2>/dev/null` 2>/dev/null || true

    endscript

}

root@leon-fyg:/home/leon#

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully I've provided enough configs etc for someone to detect why the logs are not rotated by cron.daily.

Cheers, Leon.

Why did you use the -d switch for logrotate ?

man logrotate :

-d Turns on debug mode and implies -v. In debug mode,
no changes will be made to the logs or to the
logrotate state file.

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
Why did you use the -d switch for logrotate ?

To be honest, I just copied that from another thread.
When I leave the -d, the logs aren't rotated either:

Code:

bash-3.00# logrotate -v /etc/logrotate.conf 

reading config file /etc/logrotate.conf

including /etc/logrotate.d

reading config file syslog

reading config info for /var/log/cron /var/log/debug /var/log/maillog /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/spooler /var/log/syslog 

reading config info for /var/log/wtmp 



Handling 2 logs



rotating pattern: /var/log/cron /var/log/debug /var/log/maillog /var/log/messages /var/log/secure /var/log/spooler /var/log/syslog  weekly (4 rotations)

empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed

considering log /var/log/cron

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/debug

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/maillog

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/messages

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/secure

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/spooler

  log does not need rotating

considering log /var/log/syslog

  log does not need rotating

not running shared postrotate script, since no logs were rotated



rotating pattern: /var/log/wtmp  monthly (1 rotations)

empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed

considering log /var/log/wtmp

  log does not need rotating

bash-3.00#

What am I missing here???

could you post the output of :
ls -al /var/log/messages*

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
could you post the output of :
ls -al /var/log/messages*

leon@leon-fyg:~$ la /var/log/messages*
-rw-r----- 1 root root 1.3M Jan 6 15:27 /var/log/messages
leon@leon-fyg:~$

did you try the -f option ?

logrotate -f -v /etc/logrotate.conf

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
did you try the -f option ?

logrotate -f -v /etc/logrotate.conf

YES! Forcing it does the job. But why doesn't it work normally...
Maybe after this one time forced logrotate it will do it automatically during future cron jobs?
If not, would it be a bad idea to add the -f to the cron.daily logrotate script?

Thanks a lot!

Cheers, Leon.

I think logrotate use the infos provided by /var/lib/logrotate/status to know if rotate logs are needed, so I would
think that if you let it be, it will rotate the logs after a period of time

Cedrik,

thanks for your help!

Cheers, Leon.

Wow, I must have been sleeping for the last 10 years! Here's what I've been doing for a log rotation. No one asked me for this, but maybe it'll help someone do something.

#!/bin/bash

tmp="/var/log/messages".`date +"%m%d%H%M%Y"`
/bin/cp /var/log/messages $tmp
/bin/cat /dev/null > /var/log/messages

Quote:

Originally posted by Cedrik
I think logrotate use the infos provided by /var/lib/logrotate/status to know if rotate logs are needed, so I would think that if you let it be, it will rotate the logs after a period of time

For completeness of the thread: yes indeed cron now rotates the logs automatically! :)

Cheers, Leon.

Although very old this msg helped me, so I thought about contributing.

Quote:

I think logrotate use the infos provided by /var/lib/logrotate/status to know if rotate logs are needed, so I would think that if you let it be, it will rotate the logs after a period of time

It only worked with the -f option for me too, until I tweaked the info stored in /var/lib/logrotate.status. I had to set the log date to a previous date for it to start working.