Forum

Hi Hugo,
As we cannot have limitless size for log files in embedded systems, it would be great to have configurable log file size limit.

Is logrotate an acceptable solution?

Problem with limiting logfiles is: what to do when the maximum size is reached? Stop logging? Not acceptable. Remove first lines of logfile before writing new ones? Requires loading logfile in memory, removing first lines and writing it back. To slow, memory consuming, possible conflicts with multiple threads wanting to write to the same logfile.

As you can see, the solution to this problem is not easy.

My suggestion is to make it two configurable values for log files
1) Max log file size
2) No: of files
Example:- File access.log
Max log size set to 5MB & no: of files set to 5. (so max disk space used at any given time cannot exceed 25MB for access.log)
Now, access.log reaches the file size limit, move it to access.1.log & create new access.log.
If this new access.log reaches the limit. move access.1.log to access.2.log & then move access.log to access.1.log.
Keep going like this till the file number limit is reached & then start deleted the oldest file when file no: limit exceeds.
I've seen this widely used in multiple products.

Thanks
Praseed

What you describe is exactly what logrotate does. My advice is to use that.

OK thanks Hugo..
let me check it out.