You should have rolling log files of limited size and limited quantity. The issue isn’t that it’s a text file, it’s that they’re not following pretty standard logging procedures to prevent this kind of thing and make logs more useful.
Essentially, when your log file reaches a configured size, it should create a new one and start writing into that, deleting the oldest if there are more log files than your configured limit.
This prevents runaway logging like this, and also lets you store more logging info than you can easily open and go through in one document. If you want to store 20 gb of logs, having all of that in one file will make it difficult to go through. 10 2 gb log files is much easier. That’s not so much a consumer issue, but that’s the jist of it.
200GB of a text log file IS weird. It’s one thing if you had a core dump or other huge info dump, which, granted, shouldn’t be generated on their own, but at least they have a reason for being big. 200GB of plain text logs is just silly
You should have rolling log files of limited size and limited quantity. The issue isn’t that it’s a text file, it’s that they’re not following pretty standard logging procedures to prevent this kind of thing and make logs more useful.
Essentially, when your log file reaches a configured size, it should create a new one and start writing into that, deleting the oldest if there are more log files than your configured limit.
This prevents runaway logging like this, and also lets you store more logging info than you can easily open and go through in one document. If you want to store 20 gb of logs, having all of that in one file will make it difficult to go through. 10 2 gb log files is much easier. That’s not so much a consumer issue, but that’s the jist of it.
As a sysadmin there are few things that give me more problems than unbounded growth and timezones.
Fully agree, but the way it’s worded makes it seem like log being a text file is the issue. Maybe I’m just misinterpreting intent though.
200GB of a text log file IS weird. It’s one thing if you had a core dump or other huge info dump, which, granted, shouldn’t be generated on their own, but at least they have a reason for being big. 200GB of plain text logs is just silly