vCenter Server vPostgres log rotation fails after 30 days due to date format

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Logs stop rotating for the following logs after 30 days:

• /var/log/vmware/vpostgres/postgresql.log
• /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log

/storage/log partition will be 100% full.

Cause

After 30 days log rotation will stop for the /var/log/vmware/vpostgres/postgresql.log and /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log due to the date format only including the day in the rotated log file name causing log rotate errors when it tries to create a new archive with the same name.

This leads to log files to stop being rotated and eventually fill up the /storage/log partition.

Resolution

Workaround:

Delete the old postgresql.log-0#.gz log files and it will continue rotating.

If it does not continue rotating, 

Update /etc/logrotate.d/vmware_postgres_log to this,
 

/var/log/vmware/vpostgres/postgresql.log {
   firstaction
      dim=$(date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-01) +1 month -1 day" +%d)
      find /var/log/vmware/vpostgres/ -name "postgresql.log-*gz" -mtime +$dim -exec rm {} \;
   endscript
   daily
   rotate 30
   maxage 30
   dateext
   dateyesterday
   dateformat -%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S
   compress
   copytruncate
}

Update /etc/logrotate.d/vmware_vtsdb_postgres_log to this,   ( This file can be found on VCSA 8.x only)
 

/var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log {
   firstaction
      dim=$(date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-01) +1 month -1 day" +%d)
      find /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/ -name "postgresql.log-*gz" -mtime +$dim -exec rm {} \;
   endscript
   daily
   rotate 30
   maxage 30
   dateext
   dateyesterday
   dateformat -%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S
   compress
   copytruncate
}

 

No other action should be needed as the cron job will run every hour.