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