# Does filebeat work with logrotation using compress mode?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692
**Category:** Beats
**Tags:** filebeat
**Created:** [April 8, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692 "2017-04-08T22:51:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@YuWatanabe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/YuWatanabe)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692/1 "2017-04-08T22:51:39Z")
Hello.
I am planning to use the filebeat to collect logs. All the logs will be rotated using _logrotate_ command for linux Reading the posts I understood that filebeat keeps track of data by _inode_.
However, if the logs are rotated using **compress** mode , I assume specifying the path in the prospectors as message\* is not a good idea.
```
filebeat.prospectors:
- input_type: log
paths:
- /var/log/messages*
```
Is there any specific combination of configuration options which I need to specify for my case?
---
### Author:  [@steffens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/steffens)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2017, 8:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692/2 "2017-04-10T08:22:07Z")
when compressing logs, you often append `.gz` to the file names. How many files to you keep as plaintext? You can either define all patterns or use `exclude_files` with `'\.gz$'` to filter out all compressed files.
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### Author:  [@YuWatanabe](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/YuWatanabe)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692/3 "2017-04-11T02:23:25Z")
@steffens
Thank you for the reply.
I am considerting about up to 31 days of text files and rest with gz files.
Looks like excluding gz extension will work out for me.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 9, 2017, 2:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-filebeat-work-with-logrotation-using-compress-mode/81692/4 "2017-05-09T02:33:33Z")
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