My catalina.out file has 37 GB which seems to prevent my app running correctly on a linux (Centos) server since the file takes up all my server space. I never thought that a log file can get this big. Would it be safe (I have no test server to try) to stop Tomcat (Tomcat9) and just delete catalina.out? Is a new catalina.out file created when I start Tomcat again?
Or would it be better to do
sudo echo > catalina.out
as described here. What actually does this command do?
I need to stop the Tomcat for an update of my app from time to time anyway and I don't need to store the older log files. So what is the best way to keep catalina.out small?
You can safely truncate (i.e. replace the content with an empty string) the catalina.out file even if Tomcat is running, which can be done manifold:
cat > catalina.out
# or
truncate catalina.out
Deleting the file, while Tomcat is down also works, but on a running Tomcat it would have a big side effect: Tomcat will still be appending data to the deleted file and the space will not be released until Tomcat shuts down.
In order to keep catalina.out small you should:
ConsoleHandler from logging.properties (.handlers and handlers): the data logged to the ConsoleHandler is also logged to catalina.<date>.log,