How important is it to keep size of log files down

As a workaround, you may be able to switch to use a single log for all virtual hosts and post-process them using split-logfile or something similar (to get them into individual logs per virtual host). This is recommended in Apache's docs here. Not sure if it's an option in your environment.

A couple of suggestions:

• Add a logger line before and after your postrotate service call to determine whether or not the postrotate section is being activated.

• I have not worked with service much, but if it has any knobs for increasing verbosity or logging to a file, I'd remove the >/dev/null redirects (so that the verbose output is actually sent!) and try any verbosity/logging knobs available.

• You mention that the logs aren't rotated, but are there other signs that Apache was successfully reloaded? To determine this, leave out the log-rotation steps (so that your logs aren't munched up), but leave the restart in place. If some evidence of attempted restart isn't showing up in the Apache logs, then Apache isn't really being restarted. The relevant logs lines usually include something like one of these:

[notice] Graceful restart requested, doing restart

[notice] Apache configured -- resuming normal operations

• I am not familiar with Amazon's implementation of CentOS, but if apachectl is available, you could try temporarily replacing your service call with an apachectl graceful, to see if that works. (I wouldn't leave it that way, but I'd try it just to add to your diagnostic knowledge).