10/16/2017 log files - manually rotating logfile with rsyslogd - Server Fault

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manually rotating logfile with rsyslogd

I want to force logfile rotation using logrotate -f /var/log/syslog , but it's only return
tones of:

error: syslog:1 unknown option 'May' -- ignoring line

error: syslog:1 unexpected text

I know that on this system rsyslogd is running. How to rotate /var/log/syslog ?I

want it empty.

log-files debian-squeeze logrotate rsyslog

asked May 12 '12 at 22:30

kbec
295 1 4 9

1 Answer

You don't tell logrotate which file to rotate on the command line. You pass it a configuration
https://serverfault.com/questions/388573/manually-rotating-logfile-with-rsyslogd 1/2
10/16/2017 log files - manually rotating logfile with rsyslogd - Server Fault

file. So in your case, logrotate is reading /var/log/syslog and trying to parse it as a config
file and failing (hence your errors).

If you want to rotate /var/log/syslog it needs to be listed in a logrotate config file

somewhere, and you just run logrotate . If it rotated recently, then logrotate -f to force it to
do it again.

Here's an example entry for /var/log/syslog from Debian,

/var/log/syslog
{
rotate 7
daily
missingok
notifempty
delaycompress
compress
postrotate
invoke-rc.d rsyslog reload > /dev/null
endscript
}

So, you need that in a file, normally either /etc/logrotate.conf or as a file snippet in
/etc/logrotate.d assuming your /etc/logrotate.conf points there, and then you just run
logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf .

Since you're running Debian, this is probably all in place, and all you need to actually do is run
logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf (note, this will rotate every log currently configured in
logrotate).

If you truly only want to rotate /var/log/syslog , you will need to create a config file that just
does that one log, based on the content of /etc/logrotate.conf + /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog .

edited May 12 '12 at 22:54 answered May 12 '12 at 22:48

EightBitTony
7,983 21 42

https://serverfault.com/questions/388573/manually-rotating-logfile-with-rsyslogd 2/2