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rotatelogs - Piped logging program to rotate Apache logs

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rotatelogs is a simple program for use in conjunction with Apache's piped logfile feature. For example:

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/logfile 86400" common

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.

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/logfile 5M" common

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

ErrorLog "|bin/rotatelogs /var/logs/errorlog.%Y-%m-%d-%H_%M_%S 5M"

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.

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Synopsis

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

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Options

-l (2.0.51 and later)
Causes the use of local time rather than GMT as the base for the interval. Note that using -l in an environment which changes the GMT offset (such as for BST or DST) can lead to unpredictable results!
logfile
The path plus basename of the logfile. If logfile includes any '%' characters, it is treated as a format string for strftime(3). Otherwise, the suffix .nnnnnnnnnn is automatically added and is the time in seconds. Both formats compute the start time from the beginning of the current period.
rotationtime
The time between log file rotations in seconds.
offset
The number of minutes offset from UTC. If omitted, zero is assumed and UTC is used. For example, to use local time in the zone UTC -5 hours, specify a value of -300 for this argument.
filesizeM
The maximum file size in megabytes followed by the letter M to specify size rather than time. Use this parameter in place of both rotationtime and offset.
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Portability

The following logfile format string substitutions should be supported by all strftime(3) implementations, see the strftime(3) man page for library-specific extensions.

%Afull weekday name (localized)
%a3-character weekday name (localized)
%Bfull month name (localized)
%b3-character month name (localized)
%cdate and time (localized)
%d2-digit day of month
%H2-digit hour (24 hour clock)
%I2-digit hour (12 hour clock)
%j3-digit day of year
%M2-digit minute
%m2-digit month
%pam/pm of 12 hour clock (localized)
%S2-digit second
%U2-digit week of year (Sunday first day of week)
%W2-digit week of year (Monday first day of week)
%w1-digit weekday (Sunday first day of week)
%Xtime (localized)
%xdate (localized)
%Y4-digit year
%y2-digit year
%Ztime zone name
%%literal `%'

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