remove growing log files

[Andreas Lorz]

Hi Community,

our Jira instance is running on a linux system. The log files are growing quiet large under [...]/jira/logs and I already followed this suggestions to reduze catalina.out size. https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/configure-log-rotation-for-the-catalina-log-in-jira-server-224398003.html

In this directory there are plenty of other log files. The files are created every day new. It's about the following files:

• manager.<timestamp>.log
• localhost.<timestamp>.log
• host-manager.<timestamp>.log
• catalina.<timestamp>.log
• atlassian-jira-gc-<timestamp>.log.0.current
• access_log.<timestamp>

My newbie question is, if I can remove those files after like 1 month or so. Or do I / the application need those files? As I told I don't really know these files and never needed them. Can anybody explain and give an advice how to handle. Thanks!

[Nic Brough _Adaptavist_ · Accepted solution]

There is no harm in removing most of these files, they're not actively used by the system and deletion won't affect them.   Sometimes Jira will stop logging (which you don't want) if you remove the currently active version of the log (it'll start logging again on the next day or restart).  That glitch won't affect the running of the system though, it really is just not writing the logs.

I'd recommend you keep some of them for a while, just in case someone reports an issue that you need to go to the logs for help with.  After all, that's what they're for!  And sometimes the access log is useful for longer, but the rules are up to your needs

I usually set up a logrotate that does something really simple like "every day, delete logs over 8 days old (32 for access_log)"

Just don't delete logs for today, and you won't have any problems.

[Andreas Lorz]

Thanks Nic for your answer. Will do so. 

Appreciate your help!