Why aren't my Windows Apache log messages being written to the ErrorLog location specified in my VirtualHost? - windows

Question

I'm attempting to override the ErrorLog location in my httpd.conf file by specifying it in my .vhost, but it's creating the file only and still writing to the .conf one.
I have the following in my httpd.conf file:
# ErrorLog: The location of the error log file.
# If you do not specify an ErrorLog directive within a <VirtualHost>
# container, error messages relating to that virtual host will be
# logged here. If you *do* define an error logfile for a <VirtualHost>
# container, that host's errors will be logged there and not here.
#
ErrorLog "logs/error.log"
# Virtual hosts
Include conf/vhosts/xyz_apache.vhost
Then I have this in my xyz_apache.vhost file (on one line):
ErrorLog "C:/Program Files (x86)/Apache Software Foundation/
Apache2.2/logs/xyzerrors.log"
If I start up apache and look in my logs directory to see what was created, I see a blank xyzerrors.log and an error.log file with startup messages in it ("Starting thread to listen on port 80, etc.).
Any idea why this might be happening, or advice as to how I can fix it? The xyzerrors.log file was clearly created, so it seems my file paths and spelling of "ErrorLog" and my vhost configuration and all the obvious parts should be correct. But it's writing to the file specified in my httpd.conf, which, if I understand correctly, should only be the backup location, should there not be one specified in the .vhost. I wondered if permissions might be an issue somehow (maybe it didn't have write access to the xyzerror.log it created so it wrote to error.log instead?), but both files are in the same directory. Is there another configuration piece I missed?
I verified what was happening by renaming the .conf ErrorLog and deleting the .vhost ErrorLog, and again saw the .vhost log created and the .conf log created and written to. I have similar setups running in Linux with no problems.
Update: Here's another piece. I was fixing an issue with lxml (I got an error, installed a newer version of it, then restarted apache), and noticed that a couple of messages appeared in my xyzerror.log. Here's what it looks like:
error.log
[Wed Oct 09 09:14:52 2013] [notice] Child 42900: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Oct 09 09:48:11 2013] [error] ERROR:django.request:Internal Server Error: /admin/
[Wed Oct 09 09:48:11 2013] [error] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Wed Oct 09 09:48:11 2013] [error] ImportError: DLL load failed: A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed. (Rest of traceback omitted)
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:50 2013] [notice] Parent: Received shutdown signal -- Shutting down the server.
Apache server interrupted...
Apache server interrupted...
Apache server interrupted...
Apache server interrupted...
Apache server interrupted...
Released the start mutex
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:52 2013] [notice] Child 42900: All worker threads have exited.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:52 2013] [notice] Child 42900: Child process is exiting
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:52 2013] [notice] Parent: Child process exited successfully.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [warn] mod_wsgi: Compiled for Python/2.7.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [warn] mod_wsgi: Runtime using Python/2.7.2.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Apache/2.2.22 (Win32) mod_wsgi/3.3 Python/2.7.2 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Server built: Jan 28 2012 11:16:39
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Parent: Created child process 40284
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [warn] mod_wsgi: Compiled for Python/2.7.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [warn] mod_wsgi: Runtime using Python/2.7.2.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Child 40284: Child process is running
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Child 40284: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Child 40284: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Oct 09 09:54:53 2013] [notice] Child 40284: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
xyzerror.log
[Wed Oct 09 09:47:54 2013] [info] [client 127.0.0.1] mod_wsgi (pid=42900, process='', application='XYZ.sysname.mydomain.local|'): Loading WSGI script 'C:/Users/etc/etc/XYZ_wsgi.py'.
[Wed Oct 09 09:48:11 2013] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] client denied by server configuration: C:/Users/etc/etc/site_media
So maybe these aren't ErrorLog messages and I need to investigate my CustomLog settings? I'm seeing similar behavior with those (an xyzaccess.log file is being written but my access.log in my .conf is being written to), but I didn't include it here for simplicity.
Update 2:
If I continue to browse my site and watch the log files, I see that logs are eventually getting written to the xyzerror.log (and the xyzaccess.log) in my vhost location. Only the initial startup messages ("listening on port..", etc.) and one site-related error were in the conf location.
Can anyone explain or suggest a solution?
Apache 2.2/Windows 7/Django 1.5/Python 2.7

Answer 1

if I understand correctly, should only be the backup location, should there not be one specified in the .vhost
Not at all !
This is normal behaviour, because the ErrorLog directive can either apply globally, or to the VirtualHost it is declared in.
Think about it. When an error is reported to the error log for apache internal events, such as startup events or module loading failure, how can it use a specific virtual host's error log, since virtual host resolution is not even possible yet ?
Apache knows which Virtual Host to use only when a client makes a request and the request is identified to refer to a specific virtual host, either via IP resolution or Hostname resolution.
Therefore, only those errors will appear in your vhost-specific error log, such as PHP errors pertaining to that vhost, or HTTP errors such as 401 or 404 codes.