I have an ubuntu 8.04 LTS server that runs openvpn. The openvpn server writes to a standard logfile under /var/log and prior to a month ago logrotate would automatically rotate the files and compress them.

The files are still being rotated however the new logfile (ovpn.log) is empty. Restarting the openvpn daemon fixes the issue (ie: openvpn writes status events to the file) but after about 10 days the file is rotated again openvpn can't write to the logfile again. This is also strange because logrotate is set to rotate every 6 months.

Openvpn runs as nobody and the logfiles are owned by root and admin which is strange because it should either work at all times or not work at all if the permissions are the cause, unless openvpn runs as root temporarily and then drops down to nobody after initializing ?