The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard gives these definitions:
/opt : Add-on application software packages /usr/local : Local hierarchy (for use by the system administrator when installing software locally)
The way I read that:
- Standard system applications should go in
/bin and /usr/bin (implied)
- Third-party packages should go in
/opt
- Something should only be installed into
/usr/local if the system administrator wants it to
By extension, if the sysadmin installs something using dpkg or rpm, it should not go into /usr/local by default.
So it's arguably doing the right thing.
logrotate is used by the system to rotate logs so you have 2 choices. You can either incorporate the rotation of these app logs into the systems rotations or setup your own and either run them manually or from the root user's crontab (Assuming the Rails app is run as root given it's directory is /root/...).
System rotation
To setup a logrotation within the system's pre-existing ones simply add a new file to the directory /etc/logrotate.d. Call it railsapp.conf. I'd use the other examples there to construct it. Also confrere with the logrotate man page.
User rotation
If you want to run your own instance of logrotate you only have to provide it with command line switches to do so.
- First make a copy of
/etc/logrotate.conf /root/rails_logrotate.conf
- Edit the file so that it has the log rotation configured the way you want (i.e. keep all logs, rotate weekly, etc.)
Run it
# 1st time
$ logrotate -d -f -s $HOME/my_logrotate.state logrotate.conf
# afterwards
$ logrotate -d -s $HOME/my_logrotate.state logrotate.conf
If things look OK you can re-run these commands without the -d switch. This is for debugging purposes only and won't actually do any of the tasks, merely show you what it WOULD do.
$ logrotate -s $HOME/my_logrotate.state logrotate.conf
You could also use the -v switch to make it verbose, similar to the output seen when using the -d switch.
Example
Start with this log file.
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=afile bs=1k count=10k
10240+0 records in
10240+0 records out
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 0.0702393 s, 149 MB/s
$ ll afile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 10485760 Aug 6 14:37 afile
$ touch -t 201307010101 afile
$ ll afile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 10485760 Jul 1 01:01 afile
Now run logrotate
$ logrotate -v -f -s $HOME/my_logrotate.state logrotate.conf
reading config file logrotate.conf
reading config info for /home/saml/afile
Handling 1 logs
rotating pattern: /home/saml/afile forced from command line (1 rotations)
empty log files are rotated, old logs are removed
considering log /home/saml/afile
log needs rotating
rotating log /home/saml/afile, log->rotateCount is 1
dateext suffix '-20130806'
glob pattern '-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]'
glob finding old rotated logs failed
renaming /home/saml/afile to /home/saml/afile-20130806
creating new /home/saml/afile mode = 0664 uid = 500 gid = 501
Check the results
$ ll afile*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Aug 6 14:40 afile
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 10485760 Jul 1 01:01 afile-20130806
Weekly Cron
To make this run every Sunday you could create the following crontab entry for the root user.
$ crontab -e
Add the following lines:
# Example of job definition:
# .---------------- minute (0 - 59)
# | .------------- hour (0 - 23)
# | | .---------- day of month (1 - 31)
# | | | .------- month (1 - 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr ...
# | | | | .---- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
# | | | | |
# * * * * * user-name command to be executed
0 0 * * sun logrotate -v -f -s $HOME/my_logrotate.state $HOME/logrotate.conf
Then save the above.
You can also use these types of shortcuts instead of specifying the actual days, mins, secs, etc.
string meaning
------ -------
@reboot Run once, at startup.
@yearly Run once a year, "0 0 1 1 *".
@annually (same as @yearly)
@monthly Run once a month, "0 0 1 * *".
@weekly Run once a week, "0 0 * * 0".
@daily Run once a day, "0 0 * * *".
@midnight (same as @daily)
@hourly Run once an hour, "0 * * * *".
References
Best Answer
I would place them in
/var/log/package_name; it satisfies the principle of least surprise better than/var/opt/package_name/log. I don't have a citation for this; it simply matches where I'd look for logs.I might also forego writing my own log files, and instead log to
syslogwith an appropriate tag and facility; if I'm looking for clean integration with established analysis tools, I don't believe I can do better for a communications channel:syslog.logrotateto tell me to let go of the file and open a new one. I don't even have to telllogrotateabout new files to rotate!rsyslogwill be in use if needed, so I don't have to contemplate implementing that feature myself.Unless I'm doing some custom binary format for my log and even then, I prefer syslog-friendly machine-parseable text formats like JSON. I have a hard time justifying my own separate log files; analysis tools already watch
sysloglike a hawk.