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Table of contents
Symptom & Impact
High log volume fills rsyslog disk queue, dropping events and reducing auditability.
Environment & Reproduction
Triggered by downstream log collector outage or undersized queue partition.
systemctl status rsyslog
du -sh /var/spool/rsyslog
journalctl -u rsyslog -n 80 --no-pager
Root Cause Analysis
Queue depth and retention settings are insufficient for burst conditions and output backpressure.
Quick Triage
Assess queue directory usage and forwarding target availability.
df -h /var /var/spool
ss -tan | grep 514
ping -c 2 loghub.example.com
Step-by-Step Diagnosis
Review rsyslog queue directives and action states.
grep -R "queue" /etc/rsyslog.conf /etc/rsyslog.d
rsyslogd -N1
ls -lh /var/spool/rsyslog

Solution – Primary Fix
Increase queue limits, ensure sufficient storage, and restart service.
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sudo tee /etc/rsyslog.d/99-queue-tuning.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
$WorkDirectory /var/spool/rsyslog
$ActionQueueType LinkedList
$ActionQueueMaxDiskSpace 4g
$ActionResumeRetryCount -1
EOF
sudo systemctl restart rsyslog

Solution – Alternative Approaches
Rate-limit noisy facilities and split critical logs to dedicated outputs.
sudo sed -n '1,200p' /etc/rsyslog.conf
sudo systemctl reload rsyslog
Verification & Acceptance Criteria
Queue growth stabilizes and no new message-drop errors appear.
journalctl -u rsyslog -n 40 --no-pager
du -sh /var/spool/rsyslog
logger 'rsyslog verification test'
Rollback Plan
Revert tuning file if memory or disk pressure worsens unexpectedly.
sudo rm -f /etc/rsyslog.d/99-queue-tuning.conf
sudo systemctl restart rsyslog
Prevention & Hardening
Set monitoring alerts on queue size and collector availability.
systemctl enable --now rsyslog
logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.conf
Related Errors & Cross-Refs
Related to journald forwarding bottlenecks and remote TLS logging handshake failures.
Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for oracle-linux-10.
View all oracle-linux-10 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →
Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.
References & Further Reading
RHEL logging stack documentation for rsyslog queue tuning and reliable forwarding.
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