Logrotation for a Rails App

This week I did a some Linux server logrotation for a Ruby on Rails application. log/your_log.log can get large on a server with traffic, and sometimes we must control how long to retain data.

Here's the basic configuration file I wrote, with comments:

# Logrotater:
# - Daily
# - Timestamped
# - Doesn't error on missing log files
# - Keeps seven copies
# - Truncates log files (allows Rails to start writing 
#  to the new log file without a restart)

/var/app/current/log/your_log.log {
    daily
    dateext
    missingok
    rotate 7
    copytruncate
}

There are many other options. Check out man logrotate on a Linux machine for more info.

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