The system was modified in the fix for #979252 to call handleError when an error occurred during the emit() processing.

I am travelling and do not have access to my systems at the moment, so cannot commit to look at this just yet.

For now, users are free to subclass the RotatingFileHandler and override handleError however they want, including implementing groodude's solution, which (as he says in his comments) is a band-aid to cover unknown error conditions. Since there is no good reason for the rename to fail, I would suggest to the poster to see if he can find out why he is getting exception on rename; and I will give this some thought when I next have time, but that will not be just yet, and until then I suggest using the subclass/override approach.

I'll leave it open to remind me to look at it, but I believe the workarounds I have suggested are not unreasonable for now.