Restarting Apache while using splitlogs can result in "Broken pipe" errors

Symptoms

If Apache is restarted while using splitlogs, the Apache error log can fill with errors such as:

[Thu May 11 17:48:15.655790 2023] [log_config:warn] [pid 3345994] (32)Broken pipe: [client 10.2.33.1:43392] AH00646: Error writing to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/splitlogs --dir=/etc/apache2/logs/domlogs --main=10-2-33-1.cprapid.com --mainout=/etc/apache2/logs/access_log
[Thu May 11 17:48:15.655747 2023] [log_config:warn] [pid 3345994] (32)Broken pipe: [client 10.2.33.1:43392] AH00646: Error writing to |/usr/local/cpanel/bin/splitlogs --dir=/etc/apache2/logs/domlogs --main=10-2-33-1.cprapid.com --suffix=-bytes_log

Description

Apache logs Broken Pipe errors if splitlogs is in use and Apache restarts. This is a known issue in Apache where a race condition can occur in piped logging during multiple graceful restarts. 

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-53462. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product. 

Update: Apache devs have a report on this issue (Bug 61926), but there has been no progress at this time.

Workaround

The error can be ignored or disabled. Disabling Piped logging will stop the warnings from occurring. The article listed below contains the steps to do that:

How to enable/disable piped logging in Apache