How to limit nginx access log file size and compress?

Question

I'm hoping to get some direction on how to set up truncating and gzip'ing on my domains' access logs. I notice that the core nginx access logs get split and compressed by default, yet my individual access logs continue to grow.

Is this something that can be set up and is handled by nginx or something else on my system that is managing it's core logs?

Solution

/etc/logrotate.d/nginx

/var/log/nginx/access_log {
    rotate 7
    size 5k
    dateext
    dateformat -%Y-%m-%d
    missingok
    compress
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        test -r /var/run/nginx.pid && kill -USR1 `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`
    endscript
}

Comments

[Michael Hampton]

Use logrotate?

[ABS]

Here's a good detailed post about using logrotate for nginx

[Draculater]

Awesome. Logrotate was new to me. Makes perfect sense now. Thanks!

[Seth]

man logrotate for additional details.

[talsibony]

I had to do the following to make it start with new config: sudo logrotate -v -f /etc/logrotate.d/nginx

[Edson Horacio Junior]

The command that actually rotates the logs is "kill -USR1 /var/run/nginx.pid". This does not kill the Nginx process, but instead sends it a signal causing it to reload its log files. This will cause new requests to be logged to the refreshed log file. Source

[Esqarrouth]

Could somebody explain what these are and what this is doing?

[Darko Maksimovic]

From man page: "Normally, logrotate is run as a daily cron job". It doesn't require running it with -v or -f etc. like in talsibony's comment. More details in unix.stackexchange.com/questions/116136/…