CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxposixsyslog
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Reputation: 1655

syslog: does it remove the old logs if there would be less space on the storage

I am using syslog on an embedded Linux device (Debian-arm) that has a relatively smaller storage (~100 MB storage). If we assume the system will be up for 30 years and it logs all possible activities, would there be a case that the syslog fills up the storage memory? If it is the case, is syslog intelligent enough to remove old logs as there would be less space on the storage medium?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1574

Answers (1)

Celada
Celada

Reputation: 22261

It completely depends how much stuff gets logged, but if you only have ~100MB, I would imagine that it's certainly likely that your storage will fill up before 30 years!

You didn't say which syslog server you're using. If you're on an embedded device you might be using the BusyBox syslogd, or you may be using the regular syslogd, or you may be using rsyslog. But in general, no syslog server rotates log files all by itself. They all depend on external scripts run from cron to do it. So you should make sure you have such scripts installed.

In non-embedded systems the log rotation functionality is often provided by a software package called logrotate, which is quite elaborate and has configuration files to say how and when which log files should be rotated. In embedded systems there is no standard at all. The most common configuration (especially when using BusyBox) is that logs are not written to disk at all, only to a memory ring buffer. The next most common configuration is idiosyncratic ad-hoc scripts built and installed by the embedded system integrator. So you just have to scan the crontabs and see if you can see anything that's configured to be invokes that looks like a log rotater.

Upvotes: 3

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