Forwarded message:
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Guenter, please forward this on to Brad at Novell and whoever else
needs to get a copy of it.
Apache should definitely rotate the logs. This feature is already
built in to other web server products (Novell Web Server 3.1, a
discontinued product, did this very well and in fact I believe that
Apache should use the same approach to log rotation for at least one
of the log rotation options), and Apache is at a bit of a
disadvantage in this area by not providing this feature.
With regards to security, why not just create a separate thread that
logs in as a "log rotation" user which may be specified in the
HTTPD.CONF file? If no user [and password] is specified, then no
additional login will be performed, and for smaller sites where this
isn't a security issue they'll be happy too.
Apache is the best cross-platform product I've seen. The
availability of all it's incorporated features from a cross-platform
perspective are one of the many MANY reasons it's the best web server
in the world in my opinion. Unfortunately, the current recommended
method for log rotation is not truly cross-platform due to the
different ways each OS handles things.
If log rotation was built in to Apache, then that's one less process
that administrators will need to worry about, and configuration will
be greatly simplified too. These are both very important selling
features for any product, especially Apache (which is free -- by
"selling" I mean "convincing others" in Apache's case). And for
those on Unix who wish to continue using their current log rotation
solutions (whatever reasons they're all valid), they won't have to
make any changes, thanks to the nature of Unix.
One person has suggested to me that as a work-around for log
rotation on NetWare (we host over 500 web sites on Apache on one
NetWare 5 server) would be to unload Apache, rotate log files, and
then load Apache again. This creates at least two problems for us,
which are 1., down time (although short, all web sites must still go
down for maintenance), and 2., Apache doesn't unload reliably on
NetWare when it's busy (and on our system it's always busy). Our
users have come to expect that their web sites don't go down, and we
credit both Apache and NetWare for this because both are stable for
us and don't have crashing as a normal part of their histories.
I also believe that there is a fantastic marketing benefit for
Apache once log rotation is added as a built-in feature -- it will
undoubtedly result in many people writing headlines along the lines
of "Apache has a wonderful new feature that simplifies configuration
for administrators" or "New log rotation feature in Apache." I also
suspect this will stir up some discussion where a few folks will
probably debate the merits of adding this feature, which is also good
because it further enhances the popularity of the Apache name in
general. In the end, I'm confident that it will mean more
administrators will choose Apache as their web server.
Although Apache is freeware, it appears that the Apache Software
Foundation is doing a far superior job at managing the project than
most commercial companies do with even simpler applications. In
essence, Apache runs things better than many businesses do, and they
also market better than many businesses do -- there's more word of
mouth advertising by fans of Apache than most businesses could even
dream of coming close to. It truly is a success, and I feel very
strongly that a log rotation feature will only make it more popular
(read "successful") because I'm convinced people will really value
this feature (as I most certainly do).
Thanks in advance.
