Logrotate

Resources

Logrotate is a tool to periodically rotate (archive), delete, and optionally compress and/or mail historic log files. Logrotate ships with, and is typically invoked by a /etc/cron.daily cron job.

USE flags

USE flags for app-admin/logrotate Rotates, compresses, and mails system logs

+cron Installs cron file

acl Add support for Access Control Lists

selinux !!internal use only!! Security Enhanced Linux support, this must be set by the selinux profile or breakage will occur

verify-sig Verify upstream signatures on distfiles

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2026年07月31日 04:29 More information about USE flags

Installation

Emerge

root #emerge --ask app-admin/logrotate

Introduction

Logrotate can be used to ensure logs are retained based on a defined policy. This policy can be based on file age, size, and number of total similar files.

Proper log storage is important, for a variety of reasons:

Readability - If logs are disorganized, they become harder to use.
Security - Logs are essential for incident responses, poorly organized and incomplete logs can make this more difficult or impossible.
Integrity - If logs are managed poorly, data could be lost or overwritten.

Configuration

Files

/etc/logrotate.conf - The daemon's configuration file.
/etc/logrotate.d - The directory containing configuration files installed by other services.

Configure daily rotation

By default, logrotate is configured to rotate logs weekly, this can be changed to daily rotation with:

FILE /etc/logrotate.confSwitch to daily log rotation

#weekly
daily

Tip
The default rotate count is 4, this should be adjusted if daily rotation is used, unless only 4 days of logs are desired.

Tip
To schedule removal of old logs add the line maxage N to the config file, where N is the number of days after which the log file will be deleted.

Note
Leaving the logrotate script in /etc/cron.daily is recommended, as weekly configuration will stop logrotate from doing anything more than once a week, despite being called more often. This is especially useful when different components need to be rotated more or less often.

Portage logrotate module

To rotate log files created by portage:

FILE /etc/logrotate.d/portage

# /etc/logrotate.d/portage
/var/log/emerge-fetch.log {
 createolddir 755 portage portage
 olddir /var/log/portage/old
 su portage portage
 copytruncate
 missingok
}
/var/log/emerge.log {
 createolddir 755 portage portage
 olddir /var/log/portage/old
 su portage portage
 copytruncate
 missingok
}
/var/log/portage/*.log {
 su portage portage
 missingok
 nocreate
}

Note
This module inherits configuration from /etc/logrotate.conf.

Note
copytruncate will copy the file contents, then empty the file. This is useful when permissions prevent new files from being created.

Usage

Logrotate is typically called by a cron job, but can be manually used with:

root #logrotate --verbose /etc/logrotate.conf

Tip
Rotation can be forced with --force.