Managing Log Files on Linux with logrotate

Without log rotation, application logs grow forever until they fill the disk — logrotate is the standard, cron-driven tool that prevents exactly that on virtually every Linux server.

/var/log/myapp/*.log {
    daily
    rotate 14
    compress
    delaycompress
    missingok
    notifempty
    create 0640 myapp myapp
    postrotate
        systemctl reload myapp > /dev/null 2>&1 || true
    endscript
}

# Test a config without actually rotating anything
sudo logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/myapp

# Force a rotation right now, for testing
sudo logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.d/myapp

Why postrotate Matters

Many applications keep a log file open by file descriptor, not by name — simply renaming the file (which is what rotation does) doesn’t make the app start writing to the new file. The postrotate script’s reload/restart signal tells the application to reopen its log file, without which it keeps writing to the now-renamed (and eventually compressed) old file forever.