What does the logrotate command do?

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.

How do I logrotate var log messages?

The command /usr/bin/chattr -a is run to remove the append-only attribute from /var/log/messages. The endscript command marks the end of the prerotate portion of this script. The next line, postrotate, specifies the following commands are to be run on /var/log/messages after the file has been rotated by logrotate.

Where can I find logrotate logs?

Logrotate stores information about when it last rotated each log file in the status file. If you look inside, you see something like: logrotate state — version 2 “/var/log/acpid. log” 2010-6-18 “/var/log/iptables.

How do I force logrotate on a file?

If you want to force Logrotate to rotate the log file when it otherwise would not have, use the –force flag: logrotate /home/sammy/logrotate. conf –state /home/sammy/logrotate-state –verbose –force.

What is Linux logrotate?

logrotate is a log managing command-line tool in Linux. The administrators write the rules and policies for handling different log files into configuration files. Through the configuration file, logrotate will execute the appropriate function to manage the matching log files.

How do I check my logrotate status?

To verify if a particular log is indeed rotating or not and to check the last date and time of its rotation, check the /var/lib/logrotate/status file. This is a neatly formatted file that contains the log file name and the date on which it was last rotated. You’ll find this file as /var/lib/logrotate.

Where is logrotate in Linux?

/etc/cron
By default, the installation of logrotate creates a crontab file inside /etc/cron. daily named logrotate. As it is the case with the other crontab files inside this directory, it will be executed daily starting at 6:25 am if anacron is not installed.

How does the logrotate command work?

The logrotate command is invoked automatically from cron, and most services have their own log rotation configuration that is implemented when they’re installed. This configuration tells logrotate what it should do with the old log files.

How do I run my own shell scripts after the logrotation?

Logrotate allows you to run your own custom shell scripts after it completes the log file rotation. The following configuration indicates that it will execute myscript.sh after the logrotation.

What is copytruncate option in logrotate?

Logrotate copytruncate option: Continue to write the log information in the newly created file after rotating the old log file. copytruncate instruct logrotate to creates the copy of the original file (i.e rotate the original log file) and truncates the original file to zero byte size.

Why is my logrotate not working?

Because when it tries to rotate next time on the same day, earlier rotated file will be having the same filename. So, the logrotate wont be successful after the first run on the same day. Typically you might use tail -f to view the output of the log file in realtime. You can even combine multiple tail -f output and display it on single terminal.