[SOLVED] Apache 2 crashes when logrotate archives log file

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feldespato · Post by **feldespato** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 4:33 pm

I'm using apache-2.0.55-r1. When logrotate archives the log file and creates a new one, apache crashes. I get the following log:

[Wed Mar 01 03:05:56 2006] [notice] Graceful restart requested, doing restart
[Wed Mar 01 03:05:56 2006] [notice] seg fault or similar nasty error detected in the parent process

the httpd process dies, so I need to do a "killall apache2" to get apache working again

I've seen this is because the logrotate scripts call /etc/init.d/apache2 reload, and this command crashes the server. If I change "reload" by "restart" in /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 it works fine.

F.Ultra · Post by **F.Ultra** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:20 pm

If I where you then I would look into why the reload causes apache to crash, it seams unnecessary to do a restart in order to simply rotate the logfiles, especially since restart causes a slight downtime for the websites handled by apache.

feldespato · Post by **feldespato** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 9:50 pm

How can I find the reason for the reload process to crash the server?

F.Ultra · Post by **F.Ultra** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:38 pm

That is a good question

I have myself not upgraded to 2.0.55-r1 yet (runs 2.0.55 as of now) so perhaps there is a bug in 2.0.55-r1? I will try and upgrade myself this weekend and will have look if mine crashes too, if it does then we have a new bugzilla entry for sure.

That the reload does is simply send "-k graceful" to the apache process telling it to do a graceful restart, one way to check is to enable all kinds of debug output in apache (dont know how to do that though) and run reload and see if there is some additional info that might give you a clue regarding why it crashes.

rsteed · Post by **rsteed** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:52 pm

I find the best solution to be rotatelogs. This method takes advantage of Apache2's piped logging feature enabling log rotation without a restart.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/progra ... elogs.html

F.Ultra · Post by **F.Ultra** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 7:19 pm

It seams like I actually was runnint 2.0.55-r1 so I'm sorry to say feldespato that they problem seams to be local to your system for some reason.