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Question

Setting up logging on LAMP Stack

  • Posted on January 4, 2015
  • shellyAsked by shelly

Hello there -

I’m having a few issues I can’t seem to sort out - I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I’ve googled and searched these forums to no avail.

I have a droplet set up with a nice little LAMP stack, phpMyAdmin, Fail2Ban, etc. I added SSL today, and am currently running through the joys of doing that (which I won’t go into right now) - and found I needed Apache and PHP error logs. I had no problem setting up the directory/location of where to put the log files, and the apache logs seem to be working fine. However, the PHP log file I set up isn’t doing anything. I even purposely made PHP mistakes to test that the log was working, and it’s not. (I do see the PHP errors showing up in the apache log though - I’d rather keep them separated, if I can.)

I set up the PHP error log location in my php.ini file, and the phpinfo() test I have tells me that PHP is looking for the log where I placed it, however, nothing is getting written to the log file. So I’m wondering if I missed something along the line? (if it helps, I directed the log files to be placed in a /home/logs directory I created.)

And while I’m at it, I’d love to make the error logs just a bit more verbose. Is there any way to pull that off?

Thanks muchly :)

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Andrew SB • January 6, 2015

The php.ini for PHP processes started by Apache is located at file /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini You can also change PHP setting in an .htaccess file in the VitualHost’s root directory using the syntax:

php_flag log_errors on
php_value error_reporting 32767
php_value error_log "/path/to/file"

The integer value 32767 corresponds to E_ALL (For more info on constants see here.)

For more info on the different log levels, check out: http://php.net/error-reporting

lflier • May 8, 2021

After spending the better part of the morning on this problem, here is what I learned…

  1. PHP error logging is off by default
  2. To enable it, you must edit the /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini file
  3. Specifically, uncomment line 586 so that instead of “;error_log = php_errors.log” it reads “error_log = php_errors.log”
  4. Restart apache (“sudo systemctl restart apache2”)
  5. To test, introduce a PHP error in your functions.php file
  6. The error log will be in the root of your site in a file named php_errors.log
  7. To find this file in your droplet, use "sudo find / -name php_errors.log

If you want to put the error log file in a folder:

  1. Create a folder in your site (e.g. “/site-root/logs”) and then copy the php_errors.log file into it
  2. Edit the path in the php.ini file starting from the site root (e.g. “error_log = /logs/php_errors.log”)
  3. If you have multiple sites, you’ll have to create the folders in every site, so maybe it’s easier and more reliable to leave the log in the root.

Note: Newer droplets will probably come with higher versions of PHP. So instead of “7.4” substitute “8.0” or whatever you’ve got.

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