Apache 2GB file limit

Just came across a new issue I hadn’t dealt with before, apparently once a file (in my case a very large error_log file) reaches 2GB or 2,147,483,647 bytes it can’t work with the file anymore. In this case the system couldn’t write to the error log and threw an Internal Server Error. I didn’t realize what the issue was until I went to download the error log to diagnose and found out it was exactly 2GB. Lo and behold as soon as I renamed it and started a new log the site worked fine again.

After some research I found it’s due to Apache 1.3.x or 2.0.x 32bit register limits. Apache 2.2.x changed it to a 64bit register so that limit is no longer an issue for people running newer versions.

Anyone else have experiences dealing with this limit?