access_log and error_log ownership

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 05:18:39PM +0100, Grégory Pakosz wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I noticed the following behavior.
> 
> 1) stop nginx (/etc/init.d/nginx stop on a debian box)
> 2) remove all logs in /var/log/nginx/
> 3) start nginx
> 
> now /var/log/nginx/access.log and /var/log/nginx/error.log are owned by
> root:root.
> 
> in fact it's the same for all other vhosts log files.
> 
> 4) issue kill -USR1 `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`
> 
> now /var/log/nginx/access.log and /var/log/nginx/error.log are owned by
> www-data:root, where www-data is nginx's user as per /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
> configuration file.
> 
> same for all vhosts log files.
> 
> Why is it so?

When reopening log files nginx has to do this from inside worker 
processes, and to be able to do so it chown's them to a user under 
which nginx worker processes are running.

Maxim Dounin