Best way to rotate Apache log files

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I've got an Apache server that has one access log file that is topping 600MB. This makes it really hard to search the file or parse it.
What software or modules for Apache are available that will make a daily copy of my access file to make it more manageable?

7 Answers

Have you looked at logrotate - this is probably the simplest, most widely available and well understood method of achieving this. It is highly configurable and will probably do 90% of what you need.

I'm a big fan of Cronolog. Just install and pipe your logs through it. For daily log rotation, something like this would work:

ErrorLog  "|/usr/bin/cronolog /path/to/logs/%Y-%m-%d/error.log"
CustomLog "|/usr/bin/cronolog /path/to/logs/%Y-%m-%d/access.log" combined

Pretty handy, and once installed, easier (in my experience) than logrotate.

The actual command for Windows, which is quite difficult to find online is:

CustomLog '|" "*Apache-Path/bin/rotatelogs.exe" 
    "**Apache-Path*/logs/backup/internet_access_%d-%m-%y.log" 86400' combined

Where the "internet_access" bit is the name you choose for your files, the 86400 is the number of seconds in one day. You need to change the Apache-Path to the relevant directory you've installed Apache to.

logrotate

logrotate is probably the best solution. Use the file /etc/logrotate.conf to change the settings for all your logs. You van change weekly to daily so the logs are rotated every day. Also, you might want to add compress so the archives are compressed. If you don't care about the old logs, you can set rotate rotate 4 to something lower.

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