This script will tail a file using tail -F to follow scripts that are rotated.
<?php
$descriptorspec = array(
 0 => array("pipe", "r"), // stdin is a pipe that the child will read from
 1 => array("pipe", "w"), // stdout is a pipe that the child will write to
 2 => array("pipe", "w") // stderr is a pipe that stdout will to write to
);
$filename = '/var/log/nginx/nginx-access.log';
if( !file_exists( $filename ) ) {
 file_put_contents($filename, '');
}
$process = proc_open('tail -F /var/log/nginx/stats.bluebillywig.com-access.log', $descriptorspec, $pipes);
if (is_resource($process)) {
 // $pipes now looks like this:
 // 0 => writeable handle connected to child stdin
 // 1 => readable handle connected to child stdout
 // Any error output will be sent to $pipes[2]
 // Closing $pipes[0] because we don't need it
 fclose( $pipes[0] );
 // stderr should not block, because that blocks the tail process
 stream_set_blocking($pipes[2], 0);
 $count=0;
 $stream = $pipes[1];
 while ( ($buf = fgets($stream,4096)) ) {
 print_r($buf);
 // Read stderr to see if anything goes wrong
 $stderr = fread($pipes[2], 4096);
 if( !empty( $stderr ) ) {
 print( 'log: ' . $stderr );
 }
 }
 fclose($pipes[1]);
 fclose($pipes[2]);
 // It is important that you close any pipes before calling
 // proc_close in order to avoid a deadlock
 proc_close($process);
}
?>