Introduction
This document describes resolution of Logrotation failures due to permission issues with log parent directories.
Problem
When we experience disk space issues, we rotate the susceptible logs to avoid future issues.
When you verify logrotation after it has been set up, this error is expected:
[root@localhost logrotate.d]# logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf
error: syslog:1 duplicate log entry for /var/log/boot.log
error: found error in file syslog, skipping
error: skipping "/var/pari/dash/webui/tomcat/logs/catalina.out" because parent directory has insecure permissions (It's world writable or writable by group which is not "root") Set "su" directive in config file to tell logrotate which user/group should be used for rotation.
Solution
Two concerns require intervention:
1. The first error suggests a duplicate entry for the log /var/log/boot.log in file syslog. The solution is to eliminate the duplicate entry.
2. The solution to second error, Parent DIrectory has insecure permissions, is more complicated.
The directory of the logs which we attempt to logrotate is not secure. There are more details in this message.
It is world writable or writable by group which is not "root"
This message indicates that either the parent of the file log has permission that allows the group (which is not root) or others to write.
Both standards are considered as not secure based on the set rules :
a. Change the rules and allow this group (in our case nccmuser) to be permitted to write
Or
b. Remove the write permission to group of the parent directory where log file is present.
This alternative is recommended because nccmuser group is a part of user nccmuser that already has the writable permissions.
It is always advisable to not alter standardized rules set by the operating system.
To avoid this problem, remove write permission for group nccmuser to the logs available to nccmuser:
[root@localhost tomcat]# pwd
/var/pari/dash/webui/tomcat
[root@localhost tomcat]# ls -l
total 140
drwxrwxr-x. 2 nccmuser nccmusers 4096 Oct 11 2021 bin
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 18949 Oct 11 2021 BUILDING.txt
drwxrwxr-x. 3 nccmuser nccmusers 4096 Oct 11 2021 conf
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 6210 Oct 11 2021 CONTRIBUTING.md
drwxrwxr-x. 2 nccmuser nccmusers 4096 Oct 11 2021 lib
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 57092 Oct 11 2021 LICENSE
drwxrwxr-x. 2 nccmuser nccmusers 4096 May 23 11:50 logs
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 2333 Oct 11 2021 NOTICE
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 3372 Oct 11 2021 README.md
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 6898 Oct 11 2021 RELEASE-NOTES
-rwxrwxr-x. 1 nccmuser nccmusers 16507 Oct 11 2021 RUNNING.txt
drwxrwxr-x. 2 nccmuser nccmusers 4096 May 20 20:23 temp
drwxrwxr-x. 6 nccmuser nccmusers 134 Oct 18 2021 webapps
drwxrwxr-x. 3 nccmuser nccmusers 22 Oct 11 2021 work
[root@localhost tomcat]# chmod 755 logs
[root@localhost tomcat]#
When you run logrotate command, you do not see these errors after both remediations are performed:
[root@localhost tomcat]# logrotate /etc/logrotate.conf
[root@localhost tomcat]#
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