1ROTATELOGS(8) rotatelogs ROTATELOGS(8)
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6 rotatelogs - Piped logging program to rotate Apache logs
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10 rotatelogs [ -l ] [ -L linkname ] [ -p program ] [ -f ] [ -D ] [ -t ] [
11 -v ] [ -e ] [ -c ] [ -n number-of-files ] logfile rotationtime|file‐
12 size(B|K|M|G) [ offset ]
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17 rotatelogs is a simple program for use in conjunction with Apache's
18 piped logfile feature. It supports rotation based on a time interval or
19 maximum size of the log.
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24 -l Causes the use of local time rather than GMT as the base for the
25 interval or for strftime(3) formatting with size-based rotation.
26 -L linkname
28 -p program
30 If given, rotatelogs will execute the specified program every
31 time a new log file is opened. The filename of the newly opened
32 file is passed as the first argument to the program. If execut‐
33 ing after a rotation, the old log file is passed as the second
34 argument. rotatelogs does not wait for the specified program to
35 terminate before continuing to operate, and will not log any er‐
36 ror code returned on termination. The spawned program uses the
37 same stdin, stdout, and stderr as rotatelogs itself, and also
38 inherits the environment.
39 -f Causes the logfile to be opened immediately, as soon as rotatel‐
41 ogs starts, instead of waiting for the first logfile entry to be
42 read (for non-busy sites, there may be a substantial delay be‐
43 tween when the server is started and when the first request is
44 handled, meaning that the associated logfile does not "exist"
45 until then, which causes problems from some automated logging
46 tools)
47 -D Creates the parent directories of the path that the log file
49 will be placed in if they do not already exist. This allows
50 strftime(3) formatting to be used in the path and not just the
51 filename.
52 -t Causes the logfile to be truncated instead of rotated. This is
54 useful when a log is processed in real time by a command like
55 tail, and there is no need for archived data. No suffix will be
56 added to the filename, however format strings containing '%'
57 characters will be respected.
58 -v Produce verbose output on STDERR. The output contains the result
60 of the configuration parsing, and all file open and close ac‐
61 tions.
62 -e Echo logs through to stdout. Useful when logs need to be further
64 processed in real time by a further tool in the chain.
65 -c Create log file for each interval, even if empty.
67 -n number-of-files
69 Use a circular list of filenames without timestamps. This option
70 overwrites log files at startup and during rotation. With -n 3,
71 the series of log files opened would be "logfile", "logfile.1",
72 "logfile.2", then overwriting "logfile". When this program first
73 opens "logfile", the file will only be truncated if -t is also
74 provided. Every subsequent rotation will always begin with trun‐
75 cation of the target file. For size based rotation without -t
76 and existing log files in place, this option may result in unin‐
77 tuitive behavior such as initial log entries being sent to "log‐
78 file.1", and entries in "logfile.1" not being preserved even if
79 later "logfile.n" have not yet been used. Available in 2.4.5 and
80 later.
81 logfile
83 rotationtime
85 The time between log file rotations in seconds. The rotation oc‐
86 curs at the beginning of this interval. For example, if the ro‐
87 tation time is 3600, the log file will be rotated at the begin‐
88 ning of every hour; if the rotation time is 86400, the log file
89 will be rotated every night at midnight. (If no data is logged
90 during an interval, no file will be created.)
91 filesize(B|K|M|G)
93 The maximum file size in followed by exactly one of the letters
94 B (Bytes), K (KBytes), M (MBytes) or G (GBytes). .PP When time
95 and size are specified, the size must be given after the time.
96 Rotation will occur whenever either time or size limits are
97 reached.
98 offset The number of minutes offset from UTC. If omitted, zero is as‐
100 sumed and UTC is used. For example, to use local time in the
101 zone UTC -5 hours, specify a value of -300 for this argument. In
102 most cases, -l should be used instead of specifying an offset.
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106 CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/log/logfile 86400" common
107 This creates the files /var/log/logfile.nnnn where nnnn is the system
111 time at which the log nominally starts (this time will always be a mul‐
112 tiple of the rotation time, so you can synchronize cron scripts with
113 it). At the end of each rotation time (here after 24 hours) a new log
114 is started.
115 CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs -l /var/log/logfile.%Y.%m.%d 86400" common
118 This creates the files /var/log/logfile.yyyy.mm.dd where yyyy is the
122 year, mm is the month, and dd is the day of the month. Logging will
123 switch to a new file every day at midnight, local time.
124 CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/log/logfile 5M" common
127 This configuration will rotate the logfile whenever it reaches a size
131 of 5 megabytes.
132 ErrorLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/log/errorlog.%Y-%m-%d-%H_%M_%S 5M"
135 This configuration will rotate the error logfile whenever it reaches a
139 size of 5 megabytes, and the suffix to the logfile name will be created
140 of the form errorlog.YYYY-mm-dd-HH_MM_SS.
141 CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs -t /var/log/logfile 86400" common
144 This creates the file /var/log/logfile, truncating the file at startup
148 and then truncating the file once per day. It is expected in this sce‐
149 nario that a separate process (such as tail) would process the file in
150 real time.
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154 The following logfile format string substitutions should be supported
155 by all strftime(3) implementations, see the strftime(3) man page for
156 library-specific extensions.
157 • %A - full weekday name (localized)
160 • %a - 3-character weekday name (localized)
163 • %B - full month name (localized)
166 • %b - 3-character month name (localized)
169 • %c - date and time (localized)
172 • %d - 2-digit day of month
175 • %H - 2-digit hour (24 hour clock)
178 • %I - 2-digit hour (12 hour clock)
181 • %j - 3-digit day of year
184 • %M - 2-digit minute
187 • %m - 2-digit month
190 • %p - am/pm of 12 hour clock (localized)
193 • %S - 2-digit second
196 • %U - 2-digit week of year (Sunday first day of week)
199 • %W - 2-digit week of year (Monday first day of week)
202 • %w - 1-digit weekday (Sunday first day of week)
205 • %X - time (localized)
208 • %x - date (localized)
211 • %Y - 4-digit year
214 • %y - 2-digit year
217 • %Z - time zone name
220 • %% - literal `%'
223Apache HTTP Server 2023-01-10 ROTATELOGS(8)