Store Logs in RAM with LogRunner

Productivity Sauce

Storing log files in RAM reduces the number of read and write operations, which can extend the life span of an SD card (or any solid state storage device, for that matter). This trick can be useful on devices running Linux or an SD card (e.g., Raspberry Pi). While you can enable and configure logging to RAM manually, LogRunner provides a more elegant solution. When running, LogRunner creates a RAM disk and copies all log files onto it. The clever part is that the utility has a backup function that helps to keep RAM usage below a specified limit (16MB by default). LogRunner continuously monitors individual log files, and when a log reaches a certain limit (by default, 1MB), the utility compresses and saves it in the designated directory.

To install LogRunner, clone the project's GitHub repository using the git clone https://github.com/jacook/logrunner.git command, switch then to the resulting directory, and run the ./setup.py install command as root. Run then the logrunnerd -d command as root to start LogRunner as a daemon. If you wish to tweak the default settings, you can do this by editing the /etc/logrunner.conf file.