Summary

There are two types of access logs that can be recorded for Jira.

• Tomcat access logs which is recorded at JIRA_INSTALL/logs/access_log.YYYY-MM-DD.
• Jira HTTP access logs which is recorded at JIRA_HOME/log/atlassian-jira-http-access.log.

How to rotate Tomcat access logs

• This Tomcat log is recorded at JIRA_INSTALL/logs/access_log.YYYY-MM-DD.
• This Tomcat log is not recorded by Jira product itself, but by the webserver Tomcat which is bundled with Jira.
• This Tomcat log cannot be rotated by JIRA applications using log4j.properties file ( Jira 9.4 or earlier ) or log4j2.xml file ( Jira 9.5 or newer ) as outlined in Change the rotation file size for Jira server logs
• So if you would like to rotate Tomcat's access log files, you can set the properties inside the JIRA_INSTALL/conf/server.xml

Steps to rotate:

1. Edit the file JIRA_INSTALL/conf/server.xml
2. Find for the property "className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve".
3. Inside the <Valve tag, where is this property above, in the end of the line, you can add another property named maxDays="7" so that it maintains only max files for 7 days for example.

4. A restart is required for the changes to take effect. Example below:

   <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" pattern="%a %{jira.request.id}r %{jira.request.username}r %t "%m %U%{sanitized.query}r %H" %s %b %D "%{sanitized.referer}r" "%{User-Agent}i" "%{jira.request.assession.id}r"" maxDays="7"/>

How to rotate Jira HTTP access logs

• This log is recorded at JIRA_HOME/log/atlassian-jira-http-access.log.
• This is a Secondary HTTP access log, written by Jira as opposed to Tomcat.
• It's only written if HTTP access log debug is enabled at Administration > System > Logging and Profiling > HTTP Access Logging.
• You can disable them if you woud like to at Administration > System > Logging and Profiling > HTTP Access Logging > Disable the HTTP access log.

Steps to rotate:

1. Go to JIRA-INSTALL/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes find for the log4j.properties file ( Jira 9.4 or earlier ) or log4j2.xml file ( Jira 9.5 or newer )
2. Proceed with the steps outlined at Change the rotation file size for Jira server logs