Zimbra log cluttering...

When you run Zimbra, logs generated by it are duplicated in system log files (i.e. /var/log/messages, or /var/log/secure) but also in Zimbra specific log files (i.e. /var/log/zimbra.log). The problem with this is that it clutters system logfiles, i.e. takes unnecessary space and makes them hard to analyze. So, it would be good to make Zimbra log only in its own specific log files.

Googling for solution I found this post but with no satisfactory solution. Since there was no ready solution, I turned to Googling on how to configure rsyslog to do that. Namely, CentOS (on which I'm running Zimbra) uses rsyslog as a replacement for a more traditional syslog. It turns out it is possible to filter according to application doing logging.

So, two offending applications are zimbramon and zmmailboxdmgr. In order to prevent them from logging into /var/log/messages add the following lines before section RULES (that resemble classical syslog rules):

if $programname == 'zimbramon' then /var/log/zimbra-stats.log
& ~

if $programname == 'zmmailboxdmgr' then /var/log/zimbra-stats.log
& ~

The first two lines will redirect zimbramon messages, while the second two will do the same for zmmailboxdmgr.