rotate 2 -> logs are mailed and disappear after being rotated twice. pre/postrotate scripts are executed. rotate 1 -> logs are mailed and disappear after being rotated once. pre/postrotate scripts are executed. rotate 0 -> logs are removed. pre/postrotate scripts are ignored. Logically, rotate 0 would mail logs and leave no rotated log. Instead, rotate 0 simply removes the log, and ignores the pre/postrotate scripts. The man page says "if count is 0, old versions are removed rather then [sic] rotated." By vague inference, you *might* be able to figure out that if the log isn't rotated, the pre/postrotate scripts won't run, but what is more likely is that you set count to zero and scratch your head wondering why your logs are never mailed and your process never gets the HUP signal sent in the postrotate script.
Erik, do we want to change this, or leave as is?
FYI, the bug (RFE) I filed for being able to send mail of the first item instead of the last one (which now includes URLs for patches) is bug #2103.
A new logrotate tarball is at ftp.redhat.com:/pub/redhat/code/logrotate/logrotate-3.3.tar.gz