LZMA2 (XZ) Compression for Logrotate

Here’s a little trick to increase compression rate and keep the /var/log directory clean.

First, create the directory /var/log/archive with mkdir (as root).

Now, add these lines to /etc/logrotate.conf:

compress
compresscmd /usr/bin/xz
uncompresscmd /usr/bin/unxz
compressext .xz
compressoptions -9
olddir /var/log/archive

As of now, when logrotate runs, it will compress the log files with xz (which provides better compression then gzip and bzip2 in most cases), and place the rotated logs in /var/log/archive. This is assuming you have logrotate and xz (often called something like xz-utils) installed. Less diskspace usage, less clutter. Neat!