[SOLVED] dovecot: No log rotation bug

[Felix]

I have some VESTA CP [ 0.9.8 (amd64)] installations, all on Ubuntu 14.04.

Today I noticed that dovecot log files in /var/log/dovecot.log (in every server) have grown quite large. I also noticed that there are no other dovecot.* files in /var/log and that lead me thinking that there is no log rotation for dovecot.

Based on the above I would like to ask two things:

• Is this behavior (not rotating the logs) by design and if so why? To my understanding, not rotating logs seems more like a bug...
• How can I setup log rotation for dovecot?

EDIT: While looking for a solution to this problem I noticed that fail2ban is failing to work correctly. It is banning clients up to a past point. After that certain point in time in the past no ban occurs. I suspect that this has to do with the dovecot log file size which is in the hundreds of MiB. As it seems, no log rotation for dovecot means no fail2ban for dovecot sooner or later.

[tjebbeke]

I have checked this on CentOS, and there I see the same behavior. You can try to change this manually:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/ ... untu-12-10

[Felix]

Thanks tjebbeke for the useful reply. I read the guide you suggested along with the following:
Setup a mail server with Postfix and Dovecot on Ubuntu / Debian
HowTo: The Ultimate Logrotate Command Tutorial with 10 Examples
Dovecot Wiki: Logging

Then I setup log rotation for dovecot as follows:

• created the file /etc/logrotate.d/dovecot with the following content

  Code: Select all

  /var/log/dovecot*.log {
    missingok
    notifempty
    delaycompress
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
      doveadm log reopen
    endscript
  }
  

• To force log rotation (for all logs) I run the command

  Code: Select all

  logrotate --force -s logrotate.status /etc/logrotate.conf

DEVS, please correct this problem in the next update. Log rotation is vital for server operation and security.

[skurudo]

Seems like a bug, we'll check this.
https://bugs.vestacp.com/issues/207

Thanks you for topic and detail answers.