How to Automate Daily Nginx Log Rotation with a Simple Shell Script

Introduction

By default Nginx writes all access logs to a single file (access.log), which can become large and hard to analyze over time. Rotating logs daily or hourly is necessary, and this article shows how to achieve daily rotation using a shell script.

Detailed Tutorial

Log Rotation Script

# cat /scripts/cut_nginx_log.sh
#!/bin/bash
Date=`date +%Y%m%d -d -1day`
BaseDir="/application/nginx"
NginxLogDir="${BaseDir}/logs"
LogName="access_www"
[ -d $NginxLogDir ] && cd $NginxLogDir || exit 1
[ -f ${LogName}.log ] || exit 1
/usr/bin/mv ${LogName}.log  ${Date}_${LogName}.log
$BaseDir/sbin/nginx -s reload

The script renames the currently written access log to a date‑prefixed file and then gracefully reloads Nginx to start a new log file.

Set Up a Cron Job

# vim /var/spool/cron/root
5 0 * * * /bin/sh /scripts/cut_nginx_log.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

This schedules the script to run daily at 00:05.

Log Rotation Demonstration

# Before rotation
[root@www ~]# ls /application/nginx/logs/
access.log  access_www.log  error.log  nginx.pid

# Current date
[root@www ~]# date +%F
2023-01-17

# Run script manually
[root@www ~]# sh /scripts/cut_nginx_log.sh

# After rotation
[root@www ~]# ls /application/nginx/logs/
20230116_access_www.log  access.log  access_www.log  error.log  nginx.pid

# Simulate next day
[root@www ~]# date -s '2023/01/18'
Fri Jan 18 00:00:00 CST 2023

# Run script again
[root@www ~]# sh /scripts/cut_nginx_log.sh

# After second rotation
[root@www ~]# ls /application/nginx/logs/
20230116_access_www.log 20230117_access_www.log  access.log  access_www.log  error.log  nginx.pid

Common Nginx log collection and analysis tools include rsyslog, awstats, flume, ELK, and Storm. Readers are encouraged to explore these tools further.