I prefer compressing old logs to save space. Edit logrotate.conf

vi /etc/logrotate.conf

Uncomment the following line:

compress

Since I keep all my hosting’s logs in /home/hosting/log I need to add a new task to logrotate:

Create a new file under logrotate.d called hosting:

vi /etc/logrotate.d/hosting

Add the following contents to that file:

/home/hosting/*/log/*.log {
  weekly
    missingok
    rotate 52
    compress
    delaycompress
    notifempty
    create 640 root adm
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        if [ -f "`. /etc/apache2/envvars ; echo ${APACHE_PID_FILE:-/var/run/apache2.pid}`" ]; then
            /etc/init.d/apache2 reload > /dev/null
        fi
    endscript
}

Explanation of script lines according to man page:

missingok
If the log file is missing, go on to the next one without issuing an error message.

rotate count
Log files are rotated times before being removed or mailed to the address specified in a mail directive. If count is 0, old versions are removed rather then rotated.
In our case we will remove logfiles older than 1 year (52 weeks)

compress
Duh!

delaycompress
Postpone compression of the previous log file to the next rotation cycle. This has only effect when used in combination with compress. It can be used when some program can not be told to close its logfile and thus might continue writing to the previous log file for some time.

notifempty
Do not rotate the log if it is empty (this overrides the ifempty option).

create mode owner group
Immediately after rotation (before the postrotate script is run) the log file is created (with the same name as the log file just rotated). mode specifies the mode for the log file in octal (the same as chmod(2)), owner specifies the user name who will own the log file, and group specifies the group the log file will belong to. Any of the log file attributes may be omitted, in which case those attributes for the new file will use the same values as the original log file for the omitted attributes. This option can be disabled using the nocreate option.

sharedscripts
Normally, prescript and postscript scripts are run for each log which is rotated, meaning that a single script may be run multiple times for log file entries which match multiple files (such as the /var/log/news/* example). If sharedscript is specified, the scripts are only run once, no matter how many logs match the wildcarded pattern. However, if none of the logs in the pattern require rotating, the scripts will not be run at all. This option overrides the nosharedscripts option and implies create option.
postrotate/endscript
The lines between postrotate and endscript (both of which must appear on lines by themselves) are executed after the log file is rotated. These directives may only appear inside of a log file definition.

In order to keep my servers always showing the correct date/time I use a little software called chrony and make sure I’m using the correct time zone.

All the actions below need superuser privileges

To install it simply use apt-get:

$ apt-get install chrony

Once you’ve installed chrony you need to select your current time zone:

$ tzselect

To make sure it is selected on every boot I just export the TZ environment variable in my /etc/rc.local

$ vi /etc/rc.local

And add the following lines:
# Export timezone
TZ=’Europe/Brussels’; export TZ

I found doing the above was not enough, so I also edited my /etc/timezone file and added the correct time zone there:

$ echo "Europe/Brussels" > /etc/timezone

And still it wasn’t enough, so I reconfigured the package tzdata

$ dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

And finally that did it! To make sure it would still be correct on a future reboot I rebooted my machine:

$ reboot