[users@httpd] Apache 1.3.27 virtualhost logging stops at random intervals.

[as...@phoenixbox.org]

Hello,

I've researched this problem for several days across the internet now.  I've
even been through the archives for this list with a fairly fine-toothed comb. 
So far, I've found no good answer/solution to my current problem.  Here is the
basics of this problem:

At non-regular intervals, the access_log files for my virtualhosts simply stop
adding entries.  The modification times of the files actually update, as if
they're being written to.  The contents of the file, however simply stops
updating. The logging stops at various points, after full lines, or right in the
middle of writing a line to the log file.  Some of them have entries that don't
even finish the last line in the log, just a few characters into it.  I've
scoured my system's crontab entries and turned each and every one of them off in
an attempt to catch the 'culprit'.  This did not help.  I actively monitored
(tail -f) one of the vhost's logfiles, and watched for the instant it stopped. 
(I had set up a cronjob using wget to generate an entry every minute)  As soon
as I saw it stop, I'd check the latest entries in every single logfile in
/var/log.  Nothing useful could be found.  I've tried all of the suggestions
found to *similar* problems across the internet:  I've sent SIGUSR1, and SIGHUP
to the http daemon in an attempt to get it to close, and re-open it's logfiles. 
None of that works.  I can, however, get the logging to start up again.  If I
"echo >> logfile" and 'force' a little data into the file that way, logging
picks up as if it never stopped.  I am not rotating my vhost's logfiles, so
rotation is not the problem.  Hell, I'm not even rotating my primary http logs
anymore, because I shut off rotation just to be sure it wasn't causing the
problem.  The log file sizes don't seem to be an issue either.  Their sizes
range from a few hundred bytes to 100 kilobytes.  Nothing much over that.  I'm
completely at a loss here. I really hope someone can point me to a fix for this.
There are 10 servers set up like this one, and they don't seem to have this
issue.  This one is the only one I have running Redhat 7.3. The rest are on 7.2
or 7.1.  I have compared configurations quite carefully, and cannot find any
discrepancies between them.  As there should not be any because we use scripts
to duplicate our setup steps for accounts and sites on each server.

Here is some information relevant to this issue:

Example virtualhost entry from my httpd.conf:

<VirtualHost 127.127.127.127>
        ServerAdmin someone@example.org
        ServerName www.example.org
        DocumentRoot /home/someone/public_html
        ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/someone/error_log
        CustomLog /var/log/httpd/someone/hit_log common env=!host
        <Directory /home/someone/public_html>
                  php_admin_value open_basedir /home/someone
        </Directory>
        User someone
        Group someone
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/someone/public_html/cgi-bin/
</VirtualHost>


Running redhat 7.3 with apache 1.3.27 built from source rpm with the following
patches applied in the spec file:

Patch0: mod_ssl-%{mod_ssl_ver}/pkg.sslcfg/sslcfg.patch
Patch1: apache_1.3.23-config.patch
Patch2: apache_%{version}-eapi-%{mod_ssl_ver}.patch
Patch3: apache-1.3.11-apxs.patch
Patch4: apache_1.3.14-mkstemp.patch
Patch5: apache_1.3.14-redhat.patch
Patch6: apache_1.3.20-apachectl-init.patch
Patch7: mod_ssl-%{mod_ssl_ver}/pkg.sslsup/sslsup.patch
Patch8: apache_1.3.23-dbmdb.patch
Patch9: apache_1.3.27-db.patch
Patch10: /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/fp-patch-apache_1.3.22
Patch11: /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/fp-suexec-patch-apache.patch

and with the following configure options:

        --prefix=%{_sysconfdir}/httpd \
        --exec-prefix=%{_prefix} \
        --bindir=%{_bindir} \
        --sbindir=%{_sbindir} \
        --mandir=%{_mandir} \
        --sysconfdir=%{_sysconfdir}/httpd/conf \
        --includedir=%{_includedir}/apache \
        --libexecdir=%{_libdir}/apache \
        --datadir=%{contentdir} \
        --iconsdir=%{contentdir}/icons \
        --htdocsdir=%{contentdir}/html \
        --manualdir=%{contentdir}/html/manual \
        --cgidir=%{contentdir}/cgi-bin \
        --localstatedir=%{_localstatedir} \
        --runtimedir=%{_localstatedir}/run \
        --logfiledir=%{_localstatedir}/log/httpd \
        --proxycachedir=%{_localstatedir}/cache/httpd \
        --enable-module=all \
        --enable-shared=max \
        --enable-rule=EAPI \
        --disable-rule=WANTHSREGEX \
        --enable-module=auth_dbm \
        --with-perl=%{__perl} \
        --enable-suexec \
        --suexec-docroot=/ \
        --add-module=mod_frontpage.c \
%if %{piranha62}
        --suexec-uidmin=51 --suexec-gidmin=51 \
%endif
        --suexec-caller=%{suexec_caller}

If there is any further information that could help diagnose this issue, please
let me know.

Thank you,

Charles

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