Clearing log files located in var/log (RHEL)

Question

I am investigating the retention of logs in var/log/ for a server that hosts Gitlab. There are multiple logs here as listed below: Boot.log Cron maillog Messages Secure spooler yum.log

Is there a way that I can control the retention of these logs? Is there anything that's controlled via the gitlab.rb file? Is there a general way of identifying where logs are controlled?

Answer 1

Look at logrotate.conf manual pages (a.k.a. man pages). You can use logrotate which is part of the base RHEL install.

Here is a tutorial with examples.