Log Rotation

Definitions

1. The process of periodically closing the current log file, renaming or compressing it, and starting a new one — preventing any single log file from growing unbounded and consuming all available disk space. Typically managed by `logrotate` on Linux with configurable size limits, retention counts, and compression.

   In plain English: Automatically archiving old log files and starting fresh ones so they do not fill up the hard drive.

   Example: "The server ran out of disk because nobody configured log rotation — there was a 200GB access.log sitting in /var/log."

Related Terms

• SLA
• SRE
• CRUD
• batch processing
• Log Management
• Log Parser
• Logging Framework
• Stderr
• Container Log