Hi!
On Thu, 2014-12-18 at 10:12:27 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.17.21
> Severity: normal
>
> The default logrotate settings for /var/log/dpkg.log (from
> /etc/logrotate.d/dpkg) have "monthly 12", which grants a 1-year long history
> of
> dpkg operations.
>
> It would be desirable to have a longer history than that by default, ideally a
> *complete* history, dating back to the original installation.
Given that the default logrotate config sets both weekly and rotate, not
setting the intervals will make the entries use the defaults instead of
unlimited, and I don't see a way to reset those values.
> Considering how small dpkg.log usually is in comparison to other log files in
> /var/log, doing so looks feasible. The disk usage would cap at few megabytes
> for routinely updated stable machines over a 10-year period.
>
> If you don't want to go unlimited history, bumping to a max of 10 years (maybe
> increasing rotation period as well to 1 year) would be nice. Anything in
> between would be nicer tha a 1-year long history only.
This would diverge greatly from other log files, some of which might
also be very tiny on normal installations. I also discussed this briefly
with the apt maintainers and they didn't see the point in changing the
apt log settings to have unified values across package manager software.
And lastly if not for simple historical reasons, such long term data
tends to be useless for stuff like bug tracking or reporting. Given all
the above, I'm rather uncomfortable with changing the defaults
I think that if something like this needs to be done, it needs to be
within a wider discussion on the default log rotation settings.
Otherwise I'm inclined to just close this request.
Regards,
Guillem
