Limit the size of the logfile

jtenniswood · February 16, 2017, 10:11am

Hi
Is it possible to limit the size of the log file?
I have the -v tag set so I can monitor activity, I would still like to see this level of detail but don’t want the log files to get enormous over time.

Is it possible to put a max size on the file?
Thanks

Ajki · February 16, 2017, 10:35am

Heh i know what you mean, i made simple cron script that will compress & truncate log file once its over 100MB

github.com

ajkis/scripts/blob/master/other/rotatelogs.cron

#!/bin/bash
if pidof -o %PPID -x "rotatelogs.cron"; then
   echo "Already running,exit"
   exit 1
fi
echo "rotatelogs.cron started"
BACKUPTIMESTAMP=`date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S`
LOGFILE=/home/plex/logs/rotatelogs.cron.log

FILES=(
'/home/plex/logs/mountacdcrypt.log'
'/home/plex/logs/mountgdrivecrypt.log'
)

for task in "${FILES[@]}"
do
    echo "Checking file site of $task"
    filesize=$(du -k $task | cut -f 1)
    if [[ $filesize -ge 100000 ]]; then
        echo "Compressing $task-$BACKUPTIMESTAMP.tar.gz"

This file has been truncated. show original

you can change the compress part with delete eg change
tar -cpzf $task-$BACKUPTIMESTAMP.tar.gz $task | tee -a "$LOGFILE"
to
rm $task | tee -a "$LOGFILE"

reticentnz · February 16, 2017, 5:08pm

Why not just use logrotate? It’s built in to basically all Linux distros (assuming you’re using one of these).

create a filer under /etc/logrotate.d/ named rclone or whatever.

/var/log/rclone.log {
daily
rotate 4
missingok
compress
}

That will keep 4 days worth, although you could change this to a week or month if you wanted. Old logs are compressed. (assumes you are saving to /var/log/rclone.log which is where I output mine to.

You can then use ‘zcat’ on the compressed logs rather than cat to display/search them.