Where does logrotate save its own log

Adding delaycompress to the configuration section for /var/log/messages solved the problem.

From man logrotate:

   delaycompress
          Postpone  compression of the previous log file to the next rota‐
          tion cycle.  This only has effect when used in combination  with
          compress.   It  can  be used when some program cannot be told to
          close its logfile and thus might continue writing to the  previ‐
          ous log file for some time.

I guess sysklogd, my syslog daemon, cannot be told to close its logfile, and thus this is necessary.

Interestingly, the original configuration I had (without the delaycompress directive), came straight out of man logrotate (except I changed weekly to daily):

   # sample logrotate configuration file
   compress

   /var/log/messages {
       rotate 5
       weekly
       postrotate
           /usr/bin/killall -HUP syslogd
       endscript
   }

I suppose having logs written to file by apache is preferred solution in terms of stability. Imagine what might happen if your syslog will go down, or if there'll be some error in pipe command?

Why not to write your own rotation script? You could use following algorithm to avoid losing data and any downtimes.

Suppose you need to rotate file big_access_log

1. rename big_access_log to .big_access_log_rotating
2. send HUP signal to apache. It will reopen (recreate) big_access_log.
3. compress .big_access_log_rotating with any tool you like at any priotiry.

Personally, I just use logrotate and I don't care a lot about some data that might be lost, but I suppose logrotate is smart enough to do rotation in atomic way.