[Bug 1644996] Re: logrotate config uses syslog group

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas]

Steve Langasek (vorlon), yes lots of Ubuntu users, including me have
lots of containers (based on ubuntu-minimal - Ubuntu developers created
"Minimal" LXC container image without rsyslog package by default), see
ubuntu-18.04-minimal-cloudimg-amd64.manifest:

https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/minimal/releases/bionic/release/ubuntu-18.04-minimal-cloudimg-
amd64.manifest

Also see these posts and work-arounds for example:

http://www.markusz.io/posts/2017/09/29/logrotate/#known-issues
https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab/issues/1544#issuecomment-373366621
https://gitlab.timmertech.nl/docker/gitlab/commit/428e37a821f94af03e72201420ee2874be8834b4


** Bug watch added: github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab/issues #1544
   https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-gitlab/issues/1544

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1644996

Title:
  logrotate config uses syslog group

Status in logrotate package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in logrotate source package in Bionic:
  New
Status in logrotate source package in Cosmic:
  New

Bug description:
  The default logrotate config uses the "syslog" group.

  > # use the syslog group by default, since this is the owning group
  > # of /var/log/syslog.
  > su root syslog

  This is not correct anymore since 16.04, because:

  1. "syslog" group doesn't exist on a stock Ubuntu 16.04 system, it only gets installed via rsyslog
  2. The owning group is actually "adm".

  This results in logrotate terminating with the following error during
  cron.daily run:

  
  run-parts -v /etc/cron.daily
  run-parts: executing /etc/cron.daily/logrotate
  error: /etc/logrotate.conf:7 unknown group 'syslog'

  And can be fixed by changing syslog to adm group.

  This is not present when rsyslog is installed, but only because that package creates the syslog group. This is a common bug in lighter environments, like Docker, where syslog-ng is a common choice instead of rsyslog, like in this issue: 
  https://github.com/phusion/baseimage-docker/issues/338

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