SYSTEM INFORMATION OS type and version Debian 11 Webmin version 2.621 Please excuse me for resurrecting a post from ~2 years ago. [image] Feature Wish: Add miniserv.log by default to logratation Virtualmin I wish, Virtualmin would had added /var/w…

[image] Joe: We should probably default to sending miniserv.error to STDERR for consumption by the journal on systemd systems. Free rotation, and the unit name is the natural place to look for problems with a service. Alright, it was implemented here: Add o…

What exactly is being logged though? It shouldn’t grow that much and that fast! Nevertheless, the Miniserv log rotation is configured in “Webmin ⇾ Webmin Configuration: Logging” page using “Periodically clear log files” option.

[image] Ilia: What exactly is being logged though? Here are two samples from miniserv.log: 2a01:7f8:4000:1e3d::1 - johnny [06/Feb/2026:21:58:23 +0000] "GET /xhr.cgi?xhr-info=1 HTTP/1.1" 200 27336 2a01:7f8:4000:1e3d::1 - - [06/Feb/2026:22:00:04 +0000] "POST /session_login.cgi HTTP/1.1" 401 12…

If you want Webmin logs to be saved when rotated, you can disable log clearing on the “Webmin Configuration → Logging” page and use the “System → Log File Rotation” module instead.

Thank you, Ilia! I still wonder what are your thoughts on having such setting (rotation) enabled by default with new installations. When a system running Webmin/Virtualmin is publicly exposed, the potential for an infinitely growing log is a potential for a DoS attack by filling up the storage. O…

It really depends on the system and the amount of traffic, so it should be handled on a case-by-case basis, I think. Also, setting up log rotation for Miniserv logs is simple.

We should probably default to sending miniserv.error to STDERR for consumption by the journal on systemd systems. Free rotation, and the unit name is the natural place to look for problems with a service. Also gives users free ingestion of that log into tools like Loki or ELK Stack, Fluentd or Grayl…

[image] Joe: We should probably default to sending miniserv.error to STDERR for consumption by the journal on systemd systems. Free rotation, and the unit name is the natural place to look for problems with a service. Also gives users free ingestion of that log into tools like Loki or ELK Stack,…

This mirrors what other web servers usually do in the default package. e.g. Apache gets server errors into the journal, and web access_log/error_log goes to files.

[image] Ilia: @Jamie , what are your thoughts on this? Do you think we should implement it? Yes, that seems pretty reasonable to me

Miniserv webserver log growing too big - should be rotated

Webmin

Jamie February 10, 2026, 2:42am 10

Yes, that seems pretty reasonable to me