Where are the Apache and PHP log files?

Question

I've installed Apache, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 10.10 desktop edition, and it's working fine.
Except I have no clue where to look for Apache or PHP log files.

score 424 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 19 '12 at 09:00

424

By default, /var/log/apache2/error.log.

This can be configured in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini.

edited Apr 19 '12 at 09:00

Community

1

answered Nov 24 '10 at 19:18

misterben

7,347

Yep. got it. it was a bit different on windows. – Stann Nov 24 '10 at 19:38
1

Apache logs can be rotated, so you might want to check all error.log.* files – nuoritoveri Oct 06 '16 at 07:43
@misterben can you help me find enable the same error log for centOS 7? any idea? – Red Bottle May 15 '17 at 07:34
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/269090/2799 has info for other distros – misterben Jun 07 '17 at 12:24
what if apache is not installed, just php? – mils Oct 17 '17 at 04:10

score 78 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 19 '23 at 14:46

78

Check these settings in php.ini:

error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT (as recommended for development in php.ini)
error_log = /var/log/php_errors.log

Then create log file manually

touch /var/log/php_errors.log
chown www-data: /var/log/php_errors.log
chmod +rw /var/log/php_errors.log

And finally
```
sudo service apache2 restart
```

Now you can view PHP errors by this way

tail /var/log/php_errors.log

This is an agreeable solution to this issue for me.

edited Jul 19 '23 at 14:46

muru

197,895
55
485
740

answered Sep 07 '12 at 23:13

Nikolay Chuprina

911

6

would also need a step to restart the apache for settings to take effect – rbawaskar Oct 13 '14 at 10:32
2

Keep it tight: chmod 640 /var/log/php_errors.log – berbt Apr 04 '17 at 13:43

score 30 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 04 '12 at 07:19

You can also define a specific error log file for each VirtualHost in Apache. If you have any VirtualHost defined in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and enabled in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled (enable with sudo a2ensite [your-virtualhost-definition-file]), you can change the error log by adding the following line inside your VirtualHost config:

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/[your-vhost]-error.log

That might be useful if you have a lot of vhosts and want to split where they report the errors.

Also, you can watch your error log live by issuing the following command (adapt to your own log file if different from the default):

sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

This is particularly useful when doing live debugging.

It works! If I comment out error_log = syslog in php.ini – mmv-ru Oct 23 '17 at 14:08 — mmv-ru, Oct 23 '17 at 14:08

Ilyich · Answer 4 · 2018-04-01T12:30:27.450

If Apache was setup with Webmin/Virtualmin there is a separate folder for each VirtualHost.

It is

~/logs

folder for each VirtualHost user.

These are two files:

~/logs/access_log

and

~/logs/error_log

So they are

/home/onedomain/logs/access_log

/home/onedomain/logs/error_log

/home/anotherdomain/logs/access_log

/home/anotherdomain/logs/error_log

...

etc.

To view log files for each particular domain login as VirtualHost owner user of that hostname and run

tail -f ~/logs/error_log

eyal_katz · Answer 5 · 2021-10-25T01:05:32.067

If you use a bitnami distribution, it is at:

tail /opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/error_log

Bitnami distributions have their own directory structure. I had to find what it was for my server, and this is where it resides by default for bitnami. I would assume lots of people are looking for the same thing when using a bitnami distribution.

For more info see here: https://docs.bitnami.com/bch/infrastructure/lamp/troubleshooting/debug-errors-apache/

Where are the Apache and PHP log files?

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