Logrotate: Log file not being rotated

Question

I am trying to rotate a log file using logrorate. Following is the configuration:

/etc/logrotate.conf:

/var/log/test.log {
        size 1M
        rotate 6
        create
        dateext
        nocompress
}

Then I dump some data using seq command to /var/log/test.log, but the file is not being rotated automatically.

ls -ltrh test.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3M Jan 27 09:56 test.log

When I try to rotate it forcefully using logrotate -f test.log, the output would be:

error: test.log:37156 lines must begin with a keyword or a filename (possibly in double quotes)
error: test.log:37157 lines must begin with a keyword or a filename (possibly in double quotes)
error: test.log:37158 lines must begin with a keyword or a filename (possibly in double quotes)
error: test.log:37159 lines must begin with a keyword or a filename (possibly in double quotes)

Suggest if any corrections needed.

Answer 1

The argument to logrotate is supposed to be a configuration file, hence the errors about test.log being a malformed configuration file. Try:

logrotate -f /etc/logrotate.conf

If that doesn't work, you may try with debug logging turned on using the -d options. Finally, I've run into cases where the only way to coax logrotate into rotating the log file is to modify its state file /var/lib/logrotate.status. The file has the format:

logrotate state -- version 2
"/path/to/a.log" 2015-1-26-11:0:0
"/path/to/another.log" 2015-1-26-11:0:0

where the second column is the date the file was last modified. You can push the date further into the past to convince logrotate to run; but, this shouldn't be necessary given your config since you are using a size based rotation.

Answer 2

The error is giving you a hint to the problem. How did you create this logrotate file? The file might have bad data or carriage returns in it.

I would recommend reviewing this answer for suggestions on how to check your file. Or at the very least recreate the file yourself. If you copied and pasted the contents into that file, something might have snuck in with it.