Make single directory in /var/log persistent with DietPi-RAMlog #1

[jwgn]

Hi,

I need the directory /var/log/proxmox-backup/ to be persistent while all other logs are disposable.

What's the best way to achieve this? Move the directory and symlink it to /var/log?

[Joulinar]

switch to full logging https://dietpi.com/docs/software/log_system/#dietpi-ramlog

[jwgn]

That's what I did and then my NFS share went down, causing the system to log more than 100GB access failures to /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log. Which then resulted in no space left on device on my root fs.

I don't need any of these logs, except /var/log/proxmox-backup/.

[MichaIng]

You can indeed just create a symlink to have the actual directory outside of the tmpfs /var/log. The cleanup script does not follow symlinks. This is how the file list for the cleanup script is obtained:

find /var/log -type f

*.db* files are skipped as well.

If /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log exist but are not needed, uninstall the syslog daemon you use, like probably rsyslog?

sudo apt autopurge rsyslog

If some other package depends on that package, maybe it does not require the service to run instead:

sudo systemctl disable --now rsyslog

systemd by default logs to systemd-journald => journalctl which is kept in RAM. It splits and sends logs additionally to other installed syslog daemons, but actually it is sort of obsolete on modern systems.

[jwgn]

Thanks, I've copied the directory to an NFS share and symlinked it to /var/log/. I then installed logrotate and created a configuration for the files there. At least the service starts fine and is able to read the log.

[Joulinar]

That's what I did and then my NFS share went down, causing the system to log more than 100GB access failures to /var/log/syslog and /var/log/user.log.

It would have been helpful to have this information at the beginning.

Move the directory and symlink it to /var/log?

You can do that, although I'm not sure if the CleanUp job also follows symbolic links.

[jwgn]

Symlink approach seems to work fine. Thanks.