Apache HTTPd - rotatelogs not working

Question

I've edited my conf.d/ssl.conf file and changed the TransferLog directive from:

TransferLog logs/ssl_access_log

to

TransferLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs logs/ssl_access_log.%Y-%m-%d.log 60" 

(I am using 60 seconds for testing)

Since that change and an httpd restart my original ssl_access_log is not updating and a new log was not generated. What am I missing?

in my error log, I am receiving this message

Could not open log file 'logs/ssl_access_log.2014-05-30.log' (No such file or directory)
piped log program '/usr/sbin/rotatelogs logs/ssl_access_log.%Y-%m-%d.log 60' failed unexpectedly

Solution

rotatelogs requires a full path.

Prepending the ServerRoot to relative paths (i.e those not not starting with a / or driveletter:\) happens only within Apache and external programs such as rotatelogs are not aware of Apache's ServerRoot variable.

Comments

[Mike C]

No, selinux is disabled.

[Mike C]

If I specify the full path it seems to work, but why is that required when the default path writes to the correct directory? (i.e /var/log/httpd/ssl_access...)

[Mike C]

Thanks, that explains it then. I'd up vote you, but apparantly I can't yet. One more question if you don't mind. According to the docs if the location is not prefixed with a "/" then it will append to the server root which in my case is "/etc/httpd". But my logs (without rotatelogs) are written to /var/logs/httpd. Where is this specified? I am ok with the location, but the logic makes me thing they should be written to "/etc/httpd/logs".

[Mike C]

I guess I missed that, thanks again for your help in helping me understand!

[end-user]

Could the OP use something like TransferLog "|/usr/sbin/rotatelogs ${SERVER_ROOT}/logs/ssl_access_log.%Y-%m-%d.log 60"?

[HBruijn]

I don't know but that's easily tested (when one is not on mobile ) but I don't think the Apache internal variables are available to the sub shell that gets called to run rotatelogs