nginx logrotate config

Question

Whats the best way to rotate nginx logfiles? In my opinion, I should create a file "nginx" in /etc/logrotate.d/ and fill it with the following code and do a /etc/init.d/syslog restart after that.

This would be my config (I havn't tested it yet):

 /usr/local/nginx/logs/*.log {
    #rotate the logfile(s) daily
    daily
    # adds extension like YYYYMMDD instead of simply adding a number
    dateext
    # If log file is missing, go on to next one without issuing an error msg
    missingok
    # Save logfiles for the last 49 days
    rotate 49
    # Old versions of log files are compressed with gzip
    compress
    # Postpone compression of the previous log file to the next rotation cycle
    delaycompress
    # Do not rotate the log if it is empty
    notifempty
    # create mode owner group
    create 644 nginx nginx
    #after logfile is rotated and nginx.pid exists, send the USR1 signal
    postrotate
       [ ! -f /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid ] || kill -USR1 `cat
       /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid`
    endscript
 }

I have both the access.log and error.log files in /usr/local/nginx/logs/ and want to rotate both daily. Can anyone please tell me if "dateext" is correct? I want the log filename to be something like "access.log-2010-12-04". One more thing: Can I do the log rotation every day on a specific time (e.g. 11 pm)? If so, how? Thanks.

Answer 1

The value for dateext is given by the dateformat directive and defaults to %Y%m%d (year, month and day of month). You can customize it like %Y-%m-%d.

If you already have logrotate installed and working, it's probable that it runs everyday as a cron job, you just have to find it to change the time (remember that other stuff influence that, like the usage or not of anacron, but it varies to each system).