- Logs are the heartbeat of your servers 💓 — but if left unmanaged, they'll crash your systems.
- In this part, you'll learn how to clean, compress, and rotate logs for Tomcat, Jenkins, Apache, Docker, Kubernetes, and system services using shell scripts and logrotate.
📑 Table of Contents
- 1️⃣ Log Cleanup Scripts
- 2️⃣ Apache & Middleware Examples
- 3️⃣ Docker & K8s Cleanup
- 4️⃣ logrotate Configuration
- 5️⃣ How to Run & Test logrotate
- 🏁 Summary
1️⃣ Log Cleanup Scripts
#!/bin/bash
# Delete logs older than 7 days for Tomcat & Jenkins
find /opt/tomcat/logs/ -type f -name "*.log" -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;
find /var/log/jenkins/ -type f -name "*.log" -mtime +7 -exec rm -f {} \;
echo "🧹 Tomcat & Jenkins logs older than 7 days removed!"
💬 Output:
🧹 Tomcat & Jenkins logs older than 7 days removed!
2️⃣ Apache & Middleware Examples
#!/bin/bash
ARCHIVE="/opt/log_archive/apache"
mkdir -p $ARCHIVE
find /var/log/apache2/ -type f -name "*.log" -mtime +3 -exec gzip {} \;
mv /var/log/apache2/*.gz $ARCHIVE 2>/dev/null
echo "📦 Apache logs compressed and archived in $ARCHIVE"
💬 Output:
📦 Apache logs compressed and archived in /opt/log_archive/apache
3️⃣ Docker & Kubernetes Log Cleanup
#!/bin/bash
echo "🐳 Cleaning Docker & K8s logs..."
docker system prune -af
find /var/log/containers/ -type f -name "*.log" -mtime +5 -exec rm -f {} \;
echo "✅ Docker and Kubernetes logs cleaned!"
💬 Output:
✅ Docker and Kubernetes logs cleaned!
4️⃣ logrotate Configuration
# /etc/logrotate.d/devops-services
/opt/tomcat/logs/*.log
/var/log/apache2/*.log
/var/lib/jenkins/logs/*.log
/var/log/docker/*.log {
weekly
rotate 6
compress
missingok
notifempty
sharedscripts
postrotate
systemctl reload apache2 2>/dev/null || true
systemctl restart tomcat 2>/dev/null || true
endscript
}
💬 Result:
🔁 Logs for Apache, Tomcat, Jenkins, and Docker will rotate weekly and auto-restart services.
5️⃣ How to Run & Test logrotate
Once your config is ready, you can run logrotate manually or let cron handle it.
🧠 Step 1 – Check Syntax of Your Config
sudo logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/devops-services💬 Output:
Reading config file /etc/logrotate.d/devops-servicesHandling /opt/tomcat/logs/*.log
Handling /var/log/apache2/*.log
**dry-run mode (no rotation performed)**
⚙️ Step 2 – Run logrotate Manually
sudo logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.d/devops-services💬 Output:
Rotating logs for Tomcat, Apache, Jenkins...Compression complete.
Rotation successful ✅
⏰ Step 3 – Schedule via Cron (Daily or Weekly)
# /etc/cron.daily/logrotate
/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf💡 By default, most Linux systems already run logrotate daily using this cron job.
You can verify the last run log at /var/lib/logrotate/status.
🏁 Summary
- ✅ Cleaned and archived logs for Tomcat, Jenkins, Apache, Docker, and K8s.
- ✅ Created unified logrotate configuration.
- ✅ Learned to manually test (
-d) and force-run (-f) logrotate. - ✅ Automated rotation through cron for 24×7 log hygiene.
