Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Getting ready

The logrotate command can restrict the size of the log file. The system logger facility appends information to the end of a log file without deleting earlier data. Thus a log file will grow larger over time. The logrotate command scans log files defined in the configuration file. It will keep the last 100 kilobytes (for example, specified SIZE = 100 k) from the log file and move the rest of the data (older log data) to a new file logfile_name.1. When the old-data file (logfile_name.1) exceeds SIZE, logrotate renames that file to logfile_name.2 and starts a new logfile_name.1. The logrotate command can compress the older logs as logfile_name.1.gz, logfile_name.2.gz, and so on.