I'm at wits' end here.

/var/log/httpd/access_log               640  7    *    168  ZBN /var/run/httpd.pid      SIGUSR1
/var/log/httpd/error_log                640  7    *    168  ZBN /var/run/httpd.pid      SIGUSR1

These two lines, it seems to me, ought to cause my httpd log files to get
rotated.

They do.

They also ought to send a SIGUSR1 to the pid in the pidfile.

They may or may not.

This ought to result in logs getting written to the rotated log files.

This definitively does not happen.

Can anyone tell me how to debug this?

"newsyslog -vF" says some things I don't believe at all:

  (...)
  mv /var/log/httpd/error_log /var/log/httpd/error_log.0
  (create new log)
  chmod 640 /var/log/httpd/error_log
  gzip /var/log/httpd/error_log.0
  chown 0:0 /var/log/httpd/error_log.0.gz

Okay, so, no signal was sent.

But that's not the weirdest part.

  (append rotation notice to /var/log/messages)
  chmod 644 /var/log/messages
  kill -HUP 123
  sleep for 10 seconds before compressing...

Where's the 123 come from?  There's neither a pidfile nor a sigtype in the
entry for /var/log/messages.

-s