Apache Log Rotation

Log rotation using customlog

in the file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, change customlog to:

CustomLog "|/u01/app/apache/bin/rotatelogs /u01/app/apache/logs/access_log.%Y%m%d 86400 -360" common

(changing the path as needed...)
where the number 86400 is seconds to rotation (86400 is 24 hours)
and -360 is minutes offset from UTC 0 (-360 is for US Central)

and comment out any other line beginning with 'CustomLog'

this will give you logs, rotated daily, named something like:

access_log.20100901
access_log.20100902
access_log.20100903

...so you don't have to stop the server to deal with gigantic log files...

Many Linux distributions now come with a log rotation included. For example, Red Hat 9 comes with logrotate.d, a log rotation daemon which is highly configurable. To find out more, on your Linux system with logrotate.d installed, type man logrotate.

Configuration of logrotate on bobsgear

/etc/logrotate.d/httpd

/var/log/httpd/*log {
    compress
    missingok
    notifempty
    sharedscripts
    dateext
    postrotate
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
    endscript
}

/home/confluence.bobsgear/http_logs/*log {
    daily
    rotate 90
    missingok
    notifempty
    sharedscripts
    dateext
    postrotate
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
    endscript
}

/home/iplog/logs/*log {
    monthly
    compress
    dateext
    missingok
    notifempty
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
    endscript
}