NAME¶

logrotate ‐ rotates, compresses, and mails system logs

SYNOPSIS¶

logrotate [--force] [--debug] [--state file] [--skip-state-lock] [--verbose] [--log file] [--mail command] config_file [config_file2 ...]

DESCRIPTION¶

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.

Normally, logrotate is run as a daily cron job. It will not modify a log more than once in one day unless the criterion for that log is based on the log's size and logrotate is being run more than once each day, or unless the -f or --force option is used.

Any number of config files may be given on the command line. Later config files may override the options given in earlier files, so the order in which the logrotate config files are listed is important. Normally, a single config file which includes any other config files which are needed should be used. See below for more information on how to use the include directive to accomplish this. If a directory is given on the command line, every file in that directory is used as a config file.

If no command line arguments are given, logrotate will print version and copyright information, along with a short usage summary. If any errors occur while rotating logs, logrotate will exit with non-zero status.

OPTIONS¶

-f, --force

Tells logrotate to force the rotation, even if it doesn't think this is necessary. Sometimes this is useful after adding new entries to a logrotate config file, or if old log files have been removed by hand, as the new files will be created, and logging will continue correctly.

-d, --debug

Turn on debug mode, which means that no changes are made to the logs and the logrotate state file is not updated. Only debug messages are printed.

-s, --state statefile

Tells logrotate to use an alternate state file. This is useful if logrotate is being run as a different user for various sets of log files. To prevent parallel execution logrotate by default acquires a lock on the state file, if it cannot be acquired logrotate will exit with value 3. The default state file is /var/lib/logrotate/logrotate.status.

--skip-state-lock

Do not lock the state file, for example if locking is unsupported or prohibited.

-v, --verbose

Turns on verbose mode, for example to display messages during rotation.

-l, --log file

Tells logrotate to log verbose output into the log_file. The verbose output logged to that file is the same as when running logrotate with -v switch. The log file is overwritten on every logrotate execution.

-m, --mail command

Tells logrotate which command to use when mailing logs. This command should accept the following arguments:

1) the subject of the message given with '-s subject'
2) the recipient.

The command must then read a message on standard input and mail it to the recipient. The default mail command is /bin/mail.

--usage

Prints a short usage message.

-?, --help

Prints help message.

--version

Display version information.

CONFIGURATION FILE¶

logrotate reads everything about the log files it should be handling from the series of configuration files specified on the command line. Each configuration file can set global options (local definitions override global ones, and later definitions override earlier ones) and specify logfiles to rotate. Global options do not affect preceding include directives. A simple configuration file looks like this:

# sample logrotate configuration file
compress
/var/log/messages {


    rotate 5


    weekly


    postrotate


        /usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd


    endscript
}
"/var/log/httpd/access.log" /var/log/httpd/error.log {


    rotate 5


    mail recipient@example.org


    size 100k


    sharedscripts


    postrotate


        /usr/bin/killall -HUP httpd


    endscript
}
/var/log/news/* {


    monthly


    rotate 2


    olddir /var/log/news/old


    missingok


    postrotate


        kill -HUP $(cat /var/run/inn.pid)


    endscript


    nocompress
}
~/log/*.log {}

The first few lines set global options; in the example, logs are compressed after they are rotated. Note that comments may appear anywhere in the config file as long as the first non-whitespace character on the line is a #.

Values are separated from directives by whitespace and/or an optional =. Numbers must be specified in a format understood by strtoul(3).

The next section of the config file defines how to handle the log file /var/log/messages. The log will go through five weekly rotations before being removed. After the log file has been rotated (but before the old version of the log has been compressed), the command /usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd will be executed.

The next section defines the parameters for both /var/log/httpd/access.log and /var/log/httpd/error.log. Each is rotated whenever it grows over 100 kilobytes in size, and the old logs files are mailed (uncompressed) to recipient@example.org after going through 5 rotations, rather than being removed. The sharedscripts means that the postrotate script will only be run once (after the old logs have been compressed), not once for each log which is rotated. Note that log file names may be enclosed in quotes (and that quotes are required if the name contains spaces). Normal shell quoting rules apply, with ', ", and \ characters supported.

The next section defines the parameters for all of the files in /var/log/news. Each file is rotated on a monthly basis. This is considered a single rotation directive and if errors occur for more than one file, the log files are not compressed.

The last section uses tilde expansion to rotate log files in the home directory of the current user. This is only available, if your glob library supports tilde expansion. GNU glob does support this.

Please use wildcards with caution. If you specify *, logrotate will rotate all files, including previously rotated ones. A way around this is to use the olddir directive or a more exact wildcard (such as *.log).

Here is more information on the directives which may be included in a logrotate configuration file:

CONFIGURATION FILE DIRECTIVES¶

These directives may be included in a logrotate configuration file:

SCRIPTS¶

The lines between the starting keyword (e.g. prerotate) and endscript (both of which must appear on lines by themselves) are executed (using /bin/sh). The script inherits some traits from the logrotate process, including stderr, stdout, the current directory, the environment, and the umask. Scripts are run as the invoking user and group, irrespective of any su directive. If the --log flag was specified, file descriptor 3 is the log file.

USER AND GROUP¶

User and group identifiers are resolved first by trying the textual representation and, in case it fails, afterwards by the numeric value.

FILES¶

SEE ALSO¶

chmod(2), gunzip(1), gzip(1), mail(1), shred(1), strftime(3), strtoul(3), <https://github.com/logrotate/logrotate>

AUTHORS¶

Erik Troan, Preston Brown, Jan Kaluza.
<https://github.com/logrotate/logrotate>