Large syslog files consume disk space in VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle Patch 8

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Disk space on the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle appliance is consumed by syslog log files that are either not being rotated frequently enough or growing beyond acceptable size limits. The following symptoms may be observed:

• / or the log volume is filling up unexpectedly
• Log files under /var/log/ and /var/log/vmware/ growing beyond several hundred MB
• Log files not being rotated more than once daily despite high log volume
• This may make the appliance to fail to start up, showing the message "Waiting for services to start" when visiting the LCM FQDN

Environment

VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.18.x

Cause

Insufficient rotation frequency and no size cap:
The default /etc/logrotate.d/syslog configuration rotates logs on a daily schedule with no size threshold, allowing log files to grow unboundedly between rotation windows.

• Log files affected:

  - /var/log/vmware/messages

Resolution

To apply the fix, you will need to execute the fix_syslog_logrotate.sh script using the replacement syslog logrotate configuration file as the input.

1. Download the attached fix_syslog_logrotate.zip file.
2. SSH into the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle appliance and transfer the downloaded ZIP file to either the /data or /tmp directory.
3. Unzip the contents of the file.
   
   unzip fix_syslog_logrotate.zip
   
   
4. Navigate to the directory where the script was extracted.
5. Execute the following command to run the script:
   
   sh fix_syslog_logrotate.sh syslog

 

Finally, if the main service was crashed, showing the  "Waiting for services to start" message instead of the webpage, then you may need to restart this:

systemctl restart vrlcm-server.service