log file to become large and take up drive space in Tinker Edge R Debian 10 V2.0.5

[KMO 0]

Hello everyone,

The logrotate.timer does not work cyclically in Tinker Edge R Debian 10 V2.0.5. This problem causes the log file to become large and take up drive space.

On this OS, logrotate is executed by systemd, not cron.

I understand that the essence of the problem is that logrotate.timer is not enabled.

$ systemctl status logrotate.timer
* logrotate.timer - Daily rotation of log files
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/logrotate.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)
  Trigger: n/a
     Docs: man:logrotate(8)
           man:logrotate.conf(5)

Looking at the configuration file, the timer should run once a day.

$ systemctl cat logrotate.timer 
# /lib/systemd/system/logrotate.timer
[Unit]
Description=Daily rotation of log files
Documentation=man:logrotate(8) man:logrotate.conf(5)

[Timer]
OnCalendar=daily
AccuracySec=12h
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

It appears in the timer list, but there is no execution history.

$ systemctl list-timers 
NEXT LEFT LAST                         PASSED    UNIT                         ACTIVATES
n/a  n/a  n/a                          n/a       anacron.timer                anacron.service
n/a  n/a  n/a                          n/a       apt-daily-upgrade.timer      apt-daily-upgrade.service
n/a  n/a  n/a                          n/a       apt-daily.timer              apt-daily.service
n/a  n/a  n/a                          n/a       fstrim.timer                 fstrim.service
n/a  n/a  n/a                          n/a       logrotate.timer              logrotate.service

I have tried start logrotate.timer, but this command never completes.

$ sudo systemctl start logrotate.timer

I have confirmed that logrotate can be run manually.

$ sudo /usr/sbin/logrotate -v /etc/logrotate.conf

There is an option to edit /etc/cron.daily/logrotate to ignore the systemd timer and run logrotate in cron, but I consider this a last resort.

Could anyone please share the steps to start logrotate.timer? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[tooz 54]

hello @KMO, 

On 5/26/2023 at 2:51 PM, KMO said:

The logrotate.timer does not work cyclically in Tinker Edge R Debian 10 V2.0.5. This problem causes the log file to become large and take up drive space.

 

you can get it working properly by removing the ntp package:

sudo apt-get remove ntp

if you do not wish to remove ntp, you can comment out the line below in /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d/disable-time-daemon.conf

# ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/usr/sbin/ntpd

reboot and then update the system with

sudo apt-get update

check jobs with:

systemctl list-jobs

 

[KMO 0]

17 hours ago, tooz said:

hello @KMO, 

you can get it working properly by removing the ntp package:

sudo apt-get remove ntp

if you do not wish to remove ntp, you can comment out the line below in /lib/systemd/system/systemd-timesyncd.service.d/disable-time-daemon.conf

# ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/usr/sbin/ntpd

reboot and then update the system with

sudo apt-get update

check jobs with:

systemctl list-jobs

 

@tooz

Thanks for your replay.

I was able to solve the problem by removing the ntp package.