Sitecore 8, Limit the size of logging

Question

I would like to limit the size of log files to 50MB. I have following configuration in web.config

<section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, Sitecore.Logging"/>

Now sure how to set the maximum file size for logging?

Answer 1

By default Sitecore config comes with log4net.Appender.SitecoreLogFileAppender type for all the logging. SitecoreLogFileAppender does not support maximum file size.

You can change this configuration to use log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender. It supports maximum file size property.

<appender name="RollingLogFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
    <file value="$(dataFolder)/logs/log.{date}.txt" />
    <appendToFile value="true" />
    <rollingStyle value="Size" />
    <maxSizeRollBackups value="0" />
    <maximumFileSize value="10MB" />
    <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
        <conversionPattern value="%4t %d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p %m%n" />
    </layout>
</appender>

This solution has one drawback - every time file size limit is exceeded, all your logs are removed.

To avoid complete truncation and still solving the problem of too big log files, you can chante setting the maxSizeRollBackups to a low number, e.g. 2, and reduce the maximumFileSize respectively. That way, immediately after a truncation, you still have most recent log messages available, rather than none.

Same as for log4net here: Maximum Filesize of LogFileAppender in Log4Net