Cleaning up Alfresco repository Tomcat log files

docker container cleaning log files periodically with cron logrotate added to Alfresco composer

How to startup Alfresco with cron logrotate container

run to start up Alfresco instance:

docker compose up --build -d 

Verify Tomcat log files:

docker exec alfresco ls -l logs

or

docker exec cron ls -l usr/local/tomcat/logs

and see growing log like this:

$ docker exec alfresco ls -l logs
total 2728
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco   56968 Apr  1 08:35 alfresco.log
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco   13070 Apr  1 08:34 catalina.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco       0 Apr  1 07:57 host-manager.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco     694 Apr  1 08:33 localhost.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco 2707432 Apr  1 10:08 localhost_access_log.2022-04-01.txt
-rw-r----- 1 alfresco alfresco       0 Apr  1 07:57 manager.2022-04-01.log

localhost_access_log file could grow up to 7GB per day on development server used occasionally by few testers doing just few clicks per day.

Verify that cron is set

docker exec cron crontab -l

Result job to run log clean up at 4 in the morning every day

0 4 * * * root /usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/alfresco

Verify logrotate configuration file

docker exec cron cat  etc/logrotate.d/alfresco

Result, notice postrotate script delete files older than 4 days

/usr/local/tomcat/logs/*.txt {
  su root root
  daily
  rotate 10
  compress
  copytruncate
  missingok
  nomail
  postrotate
    /usr/bin/find /usr/local/tomcat/logs/ -mtime +4 -name alfresco.log.\* -delete
    /usr/bin/find /usr/local/tomcat/logs/ -mtime +4 -name \*.gz\* -delete
    /usr/bin/find /usr/local/tomcat/logs/ -mtime +4 -name \*.txt\* -delete
    /usr/bin/find /usr/local/tomcat/logs/ -mtime +4 -name \*.log\* -delete
  endscript
  dateext
  size 50M
}

force logrotate to run immediately for testing purpose

docker exec cron logrotate -f etc/logrotate.d/alfresco

see compressed log result

$ docker exec cron ls -l usr/local/tomcat/logs
total 364
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000 225363 Apr  1 13:35 alfresco.log
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000  46406 Apr  1 13:34 catalina.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000      0 Apr  1 09:57 host-manager.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000   2627 Apr  1 13:33 localhost.2022-04-01.log
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000   3471 Apr  1 13:42 localhost_access_log.2022-04-01.txt
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000  74764 Apr  1 13:42 localhost_access_log.2022-04-01.txt-20220401.gz
-rw-r----- 1 33000 33000      0 Apr  1 09:57 manager.2022-04-01.log

shutdown with

docker compose down