Log file in /var/log are not being compressed during log rotation

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

• SDDC Manager appliance partitions runs out of space due to logs being rotated but not compressed.

Environment

VCF 4.x

VCF 5.0

VCF 5.1.x

Cause

In some VCF versions the system logs being rotated are not compressed. As a result they take a lot of storage on the root partition and it might run out of space.

Resolution

1. Take a snapshot of SDDC Manager appliance.
2. Go to /etc/logrotate.conf and for each of the sections like the one below add a line "compress":
   
   /var/log/message {
        rotate 5
        daily
        copytruncate
 }
   example after line addition:
   
   /var/log/message {
        rotate 5
        daily
        copytruncate
        compress
}
3.  Delete uncompressed logs in /var/log to free some space, if they are not needed