logrotate fails to run, if status file is corrupt (logrotate running during reboot?)

[Daniel Holbach]

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ du -h /var/log/syslog
654M /var/log/syslog
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ sudo logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf
error: bad top line in state file /var/lib/logrotate/status
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ cat /var/lib/logrotate/status
/opt/click.ubuntu.com/com.ubuntu.developer.webapps.webapp-gmail/1.0.25phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

To be clear, this issue was observed on Touch.

Interestingly, we already have a fix for this, but it hasn't landed in the archive or on Tocuh; the upstart session init has a logrotate job (/usr/share/upstart/sessions/logrotate.conf) which is used to rotate the users session init log files. I'd noticed the corruption issue and put a fix in the tip of lp:ubuntu/upstart. Essentially, the solution is to remove the status file as it will be regenerated on next logrotate run. However, if the status file is corrupt, logrotate will never rewrite it and as such, no logrotation occurs leading to unlimited logfile growth.

Here's the fix from the upstart job:

__________

# Sometimes the state file can become corrupt (probably caused by
# logrotate updating it on shutdown). In these cases the file ends in
# nul bytes which causes a subsequent logrotate run (even a forced run)
# to refuse to process it meaning no files get rotated.
#
# Hence, if nul bytes are detected, reset the state file to allow logrotate
# to work.
[ -e "$statefile" ] && egrep '[^[:print:]]' "$statefile" && rm "$statefile"

__________

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Can we land this soon?

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Looks like the corruption issue is caused by bug 1387214.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

 sync ./debian/user-conf/logrotate.conf from lp:ubuntu/upstart to the upstart package used on touch
so ~/.cache/upstart/ shrinks a lot

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

to get someone assigned, nit sure we will see corrupt files anymore but better to be safe

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package upstart - 1.13.2-0ubuntu1rtm1

---------------
upstart (1.13.2-0ubuntu1rtm1) 14.09; urgency=medium

  [ James Hunt ]
  * debian/user-conf/logrotate.conf: Handle corrupt status files.
    (LP: #1385464)
 -- Ricardo Salveti de Araujo <email address hidden> Fri, 23 Jan 2015 22:53:28 -0200