Create log file when installing rpm

Question

What the best way to create a log file in an rpm spec file? The service I'm creating runs under an unprivileged user so cannot create files in /var/log/.

Answer 1

You could create /var/log/myservice/ directory and make it owned by your user. Inside %install or make install: (ignoring buildroot & such)

install -d /var/log/myservice -o serviceuser -m 750

This assumes you are running your service similarly to apache which often runs as user apache and still puts logs in var/log/apache

Then add the corresponding rule for /var/log/myservice in your spec file.

%dir /var/log/myservice