Logfile management with logrotate

Logfiles are essential components of a Linux system to keep track of events happening on different services on the system. This helps to debug issues as well as provide statistics on the live machine. Management of logfiles is required because as time passes, the size of a logfile gets bigger and bigger. Therefore, we use techniques called rotation such that we limit the size of the logfile and if the logfile reaches a size beyond the limit, it will strip the logfile with that size and store the older entries in the logfile archived in log directories. Hence, older logs can be stored and kept for future references. Let's see how to rotate logs and store them.

Getting ready

logrotate is a command every Linux system admin should know. It helps to restrict the size of the logfile to the given SIZE. In a logfile, the logger appends information to the log file. Hence, the recent information appears at the bottom of the log file. logrotate will scan specific logfiles...