Logrotate does not work as expected

Question

Default logrotate rules for httpd in my CentOS 6 installation looks like this:

[root@myVM ~]# cat /etc/logrotate.d/httpd
/var/log/httpd/*log {
    missingok
    notifempty
    sharedscripts
    delaycompress
    postrotate
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
    endscript
}

Also, by default logrotate cron is executed once every midnight. I want to change logrotate, so that it work as it is now, plus that error.log would be compressed if it's size reaches 100M.

In order to do this, I try the following:

(i) Create /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error config file:

[root@myVM ~]# cat  /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error 
/var/log/httpd/error_log {
    missingok
    notifempty
    size 100M
    sharedscripts
    delaycompress
    postrotate
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
    endscript
}

(ii) Create a cron action, which will run /usr/sbin/logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error every min

However it does not work, when I generate log file and run manually /usr/sbin/logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error I get:

[root@myVM ~]# perl -e 'print "error error error" x 10000 for 1..1000 ;' > /var/log/httpd/error_log 
[root@myVM ~]# ls -al /var/log/httpd/error_log                                                      
-rwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 170000000 2015-10-07 04:10 /var/log/httpd/error_log
[root@myVM ~]# /usr/sbin/logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error 
reading config file /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error
reading config info for /var/log/httpd/error_log 

Handling 1 logs

rotating pattern: /var/log/httpd/error_log  104857600 bytes (no old logs will be kept)
empty log files are not rotated, old logs are removed
considering log /var/log/httpd/error_log
  log needs rotating
rotating log /var/log/httpd/error_log, log->rotateCount is 0
dateext suffix '-20151007'
glob pattern '-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]'
renaming /var/log/httpd/error_log.1 to /var/log/httpd/error_log.2 (rotatecount 1, logstart 1, i 1), 
renaming /var/log/httpd/error_log.0 to /var/log/httpd/error_log.1 (rotatecount 1, logstart 1, i 0), 
renaming /var/log/httpd/error_log to /var/log/httpd/error_log.1
disposeName will be /var/log/httpd/error_log.1
running postrotate script
running script with arg /var/log/httpd/error_log : "
        /sbin/service httpd reload > /dev/null 2>/dev/null || true
"
removing old log /var/log/httpd/error_log.1
error: error opening /var/log/httpd/error_log.1: No such file or directory

What am I doing wrong?

If it is relevant, my logrotate.conf looks like this:

[root@myVM ~]# cat /etc/logrotate.conf  
# see "man logrotate" for details
# rotate log files weekly
weekly

# keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs
rotate 4

# create new (empty) log files after rotating old ones
create

# use date as a suffix of the rotated file
dateext

# uncomment this if you want your log files compressed
#compress

# RPM packages drop log rotation information into this directory
include /etc/logrotate.d

# no packages own wtmp and btmp -- we'll rotate them here
/var/log/wtmp {
    monthly
    create 0664 root utmp
        minsize 1M
    rotate 1
}

/var/log/btmp {
    missingok
    monthly
    create 0600 root utmp
    rotate 1
}

Answer 1

Your mistake here is trying to run just the one part of your config (/usr/sbin/logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.d/httpd_error) which doesn't have any rotation in it. You're ignoring your logrotate.conf.

Use:

/usr/sbin/logrotate -d /etc/logrotate.conf

so you actually get the rotation settings.