We build and maintain Rails apps at Helicoid, and use Linux servers. By default Rails apps generate a lot of logging, even when logging is set to :warn. However, these logs are useful because they contain information that can help fix bugs, or ensure proper operation of long running or background processes.

It’s a good idea to take some time out to properly manage your log files. This post discusses two tools for this: logrotate and logcheck.

Logrotate

It’s worth taking some time to manage server logs. Most Linux distros install logrotate which gradually expire old files. You can set logrotate up to rotate your Rails app logs too. Have a look at the examples in /etc/logrotate.d/ and make one for each of your Rails apps. No more 100 MB log files!

Logcheck

Another great tool is logcheck. This runs through lists of regular expressions to report anything unusual. If you’re installing in Debian or Ubuntu, make sure you grab the logcheck-database to filter out some of the noise from popular daemons on your system.

Logcheck can be set to email you reports, so you should have some interesting reading every Monday morning after a weekend away from work email.

A similar tool is swatch

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