# questions re: essential packages for base and jail rotating logs.



## sorressean (Dec 9, 2019)

Hello all,
I have two questions; one is very broad and generalized, but I'm hoping to get some useful tips. When installing a base headless server, what packages to you consider essential? Right now I have tmux/screen and openssh2. The same for jails; anything that you put in your base jails?
I'm reconfiguring my server, and wanted to make sure I'm doing everything correctly/not missing anything useful. I fully realize that "useful" is subjective.
Finally, I have a lot of logs that don't get rotated like nginx logs, for example. Is it worth installing something like logrotate? Will this interfear with newsyslog?
Thanks,


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## SirDice (Dec 9, 2019)

sorressean said:


> When installing a base headless server, what packages to you consider essential?


Well, everything _essential_ is already part of the base OS. Besides the required applications that need to be running everything else is mostly personal preference (like sysutils/tmux or editors/vim-console). 



sorressean said:


> Finally, I have a lot of logs that don't get rotated like nginx logs, for example. Is it worth installing something like logrotate?


You can use newsyslog(8) for this too. No need for anything else.


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## SirDice (Dec 9, 2019)

Regarding nginx and newsyslog(8) try this, create /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d/ directory (if it doesn't exist yet) and add a /usr/local/etc/newsyslog.conf.d/nginx:

```
/var/log/nginx-access.log               644  7     1024 *     JC /var/run/nginx.pid 30
/var/log/nginx-error.log                644  7     1024 *     JC /var/run/nginx.pid 30
```
That should be enough to get it to rotate automatically.


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