rotatelogs - Piped logging program to rotate Apache logs

rotatelogs [ -l ] logfile [ rotationtime [ offset ]] | [ filesizeM ]

rotatelogs is a simple program for use in conjunction with Apache's piped logfile feature. For example:

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/logfile 86400" common

This creates the files /var/logs/logfile.nnnn where nnnn is the system time at which the log nominally starts (this time will always be a multiple of the rotation time, so you can synchronize cron scripts with it). At the end of each rotation time (here after 24 hours) a new log is started.

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/logfile 5M" common

This configuration will rotate the logfile whenever it reaches a size of 5 megabytes.

ErrorLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/errorlog.%Y-%m-%d-%H_%M_%S 5M"

This configuration will rotate the error logfile whenever it reaches a size of 5 megabytes, and the suffix to the logfile name will be created of the form errorlog.YYYY-mm-dd-HH_MM_SS.

-l (2.0.51 and later)

Causes the use of local time rather than GMT as the base for the interval. Note that using -l in an environment which changes the GMT offset (such as for BST or DST) can lead to unpredictable results!

logfile

The path plus basename of the logfile. If logfile includes any '%' characters, it is treated as a format string for strftime(3). Otherwise, the suffix .nnnnnnnnnn is automatically added and is the time in seconds. Both formats compute the start time from the beginning of the current period.

rotationtime

The time between log file rotations in seconds.

offset

The number of minutes offset from UTC. If omitted, zero is assumed and UTC is used. For example, to use local time in the zone UTC -5 hours, specify a value of -300 for this argument.

filesizeM

The maximum file size in megabytes followed by the letter M to specify size rather than time. Use this parameter in place of both rotationtime and offset.

The following logfile format string substitutions should be supported by all strftime(3) implementations, see the strftime(3) man page for library-specific extensions.