Logrotate.service failed - syslog and boot.log not getting populated - Ubuntu Server 20.04

Got a new server and installed Ubuntu server 20.04 on it yesterday. Everything was working properly yesterday. Shutdown the server in the night and started it today.

Found out syslog and boot.log were empty.

systemctl list-units --state=failed UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB DESCRIPTION
● logrotate.service loaded failed failed Rotate log files
LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
1 loaded units listed.

Checked the status of logrotate.service.

systemctl status logrotate.service
● logrotate.service - Rotate log files Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/logrotate.service; static; vendor preset: enabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2021-06-03 15:14:08 IST; 20min ago
TriggeredBy: ● logrotate.timer Docs: man:logrotate(8) man:logrotate.conf(5) Process: 1070 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE) Main PID: 1070 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Warning: some journal files were not opened due to insufficient permissions.

Checked the logrotate.conf file

cat logrotate.conf
# see "man logrotate" for details
# rotate log files weekly
weekly
# use the adm group by default, since this is the owning group
# of /var/log/syslog.
su root adm
# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
rotate 4
# create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones
create
# use date as a suffix of the rotated file
#dateext
# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed
#compress
# packages drop log rotation information into this directory
include /etc/logrotate.d
# system-specific logs may be also be configured here.

Restarted the logrotate.service

 systemctl restart logrotate.service
systemctl status logrotate
● logrotate.service - Rotate log files Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/logrotate.service; static; vendor preset: enabled) Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2021-06-03 16:02:57 IST; 47s ago
TriggeredBy: ● logrotate.timer Docs: man:logrotate(8) man:logrotate.conf(5) Process: 16162 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 16162 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

This is the logrotate.service

systemctl cat logrotate.service
# /lib/systemd/system/logrotate.service
[Unit]
Description=Rotate log files
Documentation=man:logrotate(8) man:logrotate.conf(5)
ConditionACPower=true
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf
# performance options
Nice=19
IOSchedulingClass=best-effort
IOSchedulingPriority=7
# hardening options
# details:
# no ProtectHome for userdir logs
# no PrivateNetwork for mail deliviery
# no ProtectKernelTunables for working SELinux with systemd older than 235
# no MemoryDenyWriteExecute for gzip on i686
PrivateDevices=true
PrivateTmp=true
ProtectControlGroups=true
ProtectKernelModules=true
ProtectSystem=full
RestrictRealtime=true

But still the syslog and boot.log are empty.

Any help regarding this will be very helpful.

Thanks in advance.

1 Answer

In your logrotate.conf, the "su root adm" line is wrong.

Read man logrotate.conf and change the line to "adm". It is a group name, not a command.