rotatelogs - Piped logging program to rotate Apache logs

Synopsis

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

Options

-l

Causes the use of local time rather than GMT as the base for theinterval or for strftime(3) formatting with size-based rotation. Note that using -l in an environment whichchanges the GMT offset (such as for BST or DST) can lead to unpredictableresults!

-f

Causes the logfile to be opened immediately, as soon asrotatelogs starts, instead of waiting for thefirst logfile entry to be read (for non-busy sites, there may bea substantial delay between when the server is startedand when the first request is handled, meaning that theassociated logfile does not "exist" until then, whichcauses problems from some automated logging tools).Available in version 2.2.9 and later.

logfile

The path plus basename of the logfile. If logfileincludes any '%' characters, it is treated as a format string forstrftime(3). Otherwise, the suffix.nnnnnnnnnn is automatically added and is the time inseconds. Both formats compute the start time from the beginning ofthe current period. For example, if a rotation time of 86400 is specified, the hour, minute, and second fields created from thestrftime(3) format will all be zero, referring to thebeginning of the current 24-hour period (midnight).

rotationtime

The time between log file rotations in seconds. The rotationoccurs at the beginning of this interval. For example, if therotation time is 3600, the log file will be rotated at the beginningof every hour; if the rotation time is 86400, the log file will berotated every night at midnight. (If no data is logged during aninterval, no file will be created.)

filesizeM

The maximum file size in megabytes followed by the letterM to specify size rather than time.

offset

The number of minutes offset from UTC. If omitted, zero isassumed and UTC is used. For example, to use local time in the zoneUTC -5 hours, specify a value of -300 for this argument.In most cases, -l should be used instead of specifyingan offset.

Examples

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.

This creates the files /var/logs/logfile.yyyy.mm.dd where yyyy is the year, mm is the month, and dd is the day of the month. Logging will switch to a new file every day at midnight, local time.

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

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.

Portability

The following logfile format string substitutions should besupported by all strftime(3) implementations, seethe strftime(3) man page for library-specificextensions.