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In Debian logrotate scripts are stored in /etc/logrotate.d and is executed by a daily cron job "/etc/cron.daily/logrotate". To rotate your logs 

create a script in that (/etc/logrotate.d) location as "tomcatlogs" or any other name you desire only make sure you don't overwrite rotate 

scripts that already exist in that location. 



For your Tomcat catalina.out below is a script that rotates logs weekly and maintain logs for a year. Rotated logs after 52 weeks are deleted. Don't forget to 

change the correct path to catalina.out.



<pre name="code" class="java">

 /opt/logs/tomcat/catalina.out { 
 weekly
 rotate 52 
 compress 
 delaycompress
 missingok
 create 640 tomcat tomcat 
 }

 /more/logs/to/rotate/can-be-in-the-script-file {
 ....
 }
	 
 
</pre>


Note that a script file can contain several individual scripts. To check for errors in your script, run the following. It will run logrotate in debug mode and no changes to your logs will be made.



<pre name="code" class="java">
 
 /usr/sbin/logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/THE-SCRIPT-YOU-CREATED
 
 
</pre>



Using prerotate and postrotate


Before and after logs are rotated sometimes you need to run a command before and after each log rotation. Below is the standard Apache2 logrotate script edited to update <a href="http://awstats.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank" class="news_link" title="What is AWStats ?">AWStats</a> before each rotation. Updating AWStats before rotation will help to prevent logs loss.




<pre name="code" class="java">


 /var/log/apache2/access.log {
 weekly
 missingok
 rotate 52
 compress
 delaycompress
 notifempty
 create 640 root adm
 sharedscripts
 prerotate
 /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl 
 -config=THE-CONFIG -update > /dev/null
 endscript
 postrotate
 /etc/init.d/apache2 reload > /dev/null
 endscript
 }
 
 
</pre>



prerotate and postrotate must be terminated with endscript and must be in each separate line. See above. We also used sharedscripts to tell logrotate that both prerotate and postrotate will be executed only once.




To manually/force logs rotation use the -f option shown below. 


<pre name="code" class="java">
 
 /usr/sbin/logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.d/THE-SCRIPT-YOU-CREATED
 
 
</pre>



For more information about more logrotate options see logrotate man pages (man logrotate).




Good luck.

Rotating webserver and Tomcat logs with logrotate in Debian; update AWStats before rotation