How to use logrotate to manage log files in Linux
This article was originally written for xmodulo . Log files contain useful information about what is going on within the system. They are often inspected during troubleshooting processes or as part of server performance analysis. For a busy server, log files may grow quickly into very large sizes. This becomes a problem as the server will soon run out of space. Besides, opening and inspecting a single large log file can often be tricky. logrotate is a very useful tool that can automate the process of breaking up (or rotating), compressing, and deleting old log files. For example, you can set up logrotate such that the log file /var/log/foo is rotated every 30 days, and logs older than 6 months are deleted. Once configured, the process is fully automated using logrotate without any further need for human interaction. Optionally, old logs can be emailed as well, but that option is beyond the scope of this tutorial. The logrotate package is ...