newsyslog and apache

[DA Forsyth]

On 2 Oct 2008 , freebsd-questions-request at freebsd.org entreated about
 "freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 235, Issue 11":

> No need to change log rotation software since the problem clearly is
> somewhere else. You need to inspect Apache's error logs to see why it
> cannot start.
> 

the previous error log shows
[Wed Oct 01 08:00:03 2008] [notice] Graceful restart requested, doing 
restart
[Wed Oct 01 08:00:04 2008] [notice] seg fault or similar nasty error 
detected in the parent process

the new error log shows, after the manual start
[Wed Oct 01 08:39:09 2008] [warn] pid file /var/run/httpd.pid 
overwritten -- Unclean shutdown of previous Apache run?
[Wed Oct 01 08:39:09 2008] [notice] Apache/2.0.63 (FreeBSD) PHP/4.4.9 
with Suhosin-Patch DAV/2 SVN/1.5.2 configured -- resuming normal 
operations

those error messages are repeated any time I do a 
   apachectl graceful

However, doing
   apachectl stop
   apachectlstart
works as expected.

apache version is apache-2.0.63_2 from ports
uname -a gives
FreeBSD iwr.ru.ac.za 7.0-RELEASE-p1 FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE-p1 #2: Mon 
Jun  2 13:10:26 SAST 2008     
iwr.ru.ac.za:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/KERNIWR70  i386

php v4 is installed, though i do plan to upgrade that to V5 as soon 
as I get time to do it.

PS: I used to use logrotate, but it too stopped working correctly, 
with apache process stopping in a similar way that is why I changed 
to newsyslog.  I rotate the logs monthly, and set it to 8am so there 
is a chance I'll be on hand to start apache to minimize downtime.


--
       DA Fo rsyth            Network Supervisor
Principal Technical Officer -- Institute for Water Research
http://www.ru.ac.za/institutes/iwr/