~$ sudo apt-get

A common issue with occurs when apache is updated. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will revert /var/log/httpd to 0755 with root:root as ownership resulting in the following error.

WARNING: (****-****-****) Unable to retrieve local file listing
DETAIL: /var/log/httpd/access_log : Permission denied

A temporary fix until the next apache update, which are few and far between, is to ‘chmod 0755 /var/log/httpd’. Then ensure the current access logs are readable to the urchin user, 0644 should work. A permanent work around is to specify a log directory that will not be touched by the httpd rpm and give urchin sufficient permissions to access it.