Configure and use logrotate

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.

Enable logrotate

Recent versions of Bitnami stacks ship Logrotate configuration files for all servers.

If you are using a virtual machine or cloud image, Logrotate is already configured and enabled by default.

Locate logrotate files

Logrotate files for different servers are stored in the /opt/bitnami/config/logrotate/logrotate.d and /etc/logrotate.d directories. For instance, to configure the Apache Logrotate file, edit the file at /opt/bitnami/config/logrotate/logrotate.d/apache. Use the man logrotate command for information on all available options.

By default, Logrotate uses the “copytruncate” approach so it is not necessary to restart the servers.

IMPORTANT: The “copytruncate” approach truncates the original log file to zero size in place after creating a copy, instead of moving the old log file and optionally creating a new one. There is a very small time slice between copying the file and truncating it, so some logging data might be lost. To record every request, use a different approach for rotating the logs.

Test logrotate

The command below displays the current Logrotate configuration for the Apache server:

$ sudo logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/apache

rotating pattern: /opt/bitnami/apache/logs/*log  weekly (150 rotations)
empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed
considering log /opt/bitnami/logs/access_log
  log does not need rotating
considering log /opt/bitnami/apache/logs/error_log
  log does not need rotating

To test Logrotate, run the command below and then check the Apache server’s log/ directory which should contain the compressed files with the logs:

$ sudo logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.d/apache
$ ls /opt/bitnami/apache/logs

access_log  access_log-YYYYMMDD.gz  error_log  error_log-YYYYMMDD.gz