Apache splitting logs

Question

I've a log of a busy website that grows very fast. I'd like to know if there's a way to "split" the log file every day without using external tools.

EDIT: My Fault, I'm on a Windows server 2003, Apache Version 2.0.64.

Answer 1

Apache httpd is capable of writing error and access log files through a pipe to another process, rather than directly to a file. This capability dramatically increases the flexibility of logging, without adding code to the main server. In order to write logs to a pipe, simply replace the filename with the pipe character "|", followed by the name of the executable which should accept log entries on its standard input.

You can use this technique to pipe the logs to a script which then splits the logs in any way you like. This is often used to split by virtual host.

Answer 2

You can use logrotate to keep your log files small and you can also compress them.

For example, you can use something like:

/var/log/apache/*.log {
      daily
      rotate 5
      size 100M
      compress
      postrotate
         /usr/bin/killall -HUP apache
      endscript
 }

This will keep five rotated files. The logs will be rotated daily and compressed. For more info, see man logrotate.