Logrotates rotates files as numbered where 1 is the newest, 2 is the next to newest. This makes sense a lot of situations. In other situations it would be nicer if the numbering was a date (eg. YYYYMMDD). If you make incremental backups then this will save a lot of space. There is already a patch for it. http://www.devil-linux.us/pub/devel/sources/1.3/logrotate-3.6.6-dateext.dif.bz2 It is, however, not compatible with 3.6.5. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
this appears to have been dropped along the way.
dateext is included in 3.7.1