Catalina Logs are not Rotated or Removed

Symptoms

1. catalina.out is not rotated

2. old catalina.*.log files are not removed

These log files can grow large in size.

Cause

Confluence uses Tomcat's default logging configuration. This configuration means:

• catalina.out gets all output from stdout and stderr via ConsoleHandler, and also logs from bootstrap step when you start or stop Confluence

• catalina.out is never rotated

• catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log contains the output from stdout and stderr via FileHandler, but not the bootstrap logs

• catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log files are created on the first log event of that date, or when the Tomcat server starts. This means that if there is no log for that date, and the server was not started on that date, then the file is never created.

• catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log and catalina.out files are not removed

• localhost, manager and host-manager logs are configured similarly to catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log files

Resolution

1. Reduce the amount logged to catalina.out, by disabling the ConsoleHandler. This is done by modifying the conf/logging.properties file. Find the line that looks like this:

   conf/logging.properties

   .handlers = 1catalina.org.apache.juli.AsyncFileHandler, java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler

   Change it to look like this:

   conf/logging.properties

   .handlers = 1catalina.org.apache.juli.AsyncFileHandler

   This will reduce the amount of logging to catalina.out, and does not lose any logging, since all of this output is already being put into the *.log files.

2. Set up a scheduled job, using cron or some alternative, which removes old log files. For example to remove all the files older than one week, a script like this should do the job:

   sample_catalina_log_clean.sh

   #!/bin/sh find $CONFLUENCE_INSTALL/logs -name 'catalina.*.log' -mtime +1w -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f

   Remember to replace $CONFLUENCE_INSTALL with your actual Confluence install path, and to test your script on sample data to make sure you don't accidentally delete any logs that you want to keep.