Where can I find the error logs of nginx, using fa

Question

I'm using django with fastcgi + nginx. I want to know where the logs (error) are stored in this case

Answer 1

You can use lsof (list of open files) in most cases to find open log files without knowing the configuration.

Example:

Find the PID of httpd (same concept applies for nginx and other programs):

$ ps aux | grep httpd
...
root     17970  0.0  0.3 495964 64388 ?        Ssl  Oct29   3:45 /usr/sbin/httpd
...

Then search for open log files using lsof with the PID:

$ lsof -p 17970 | grep log
httpd   17970 root    2w   REG             253,15     2278      6723 /var/log/httpd/error_log
httpd   17970 root   12w   REG             253,15        0      1387 /var/log/httpd/access_log

If lsof prints nothing, even though you expected the log files to be found, issue the same command using sudo.

You can read a little more here.

Answer 2

My ngninx logs are located here:

/usr/local/var/log/nginx/*

You can also check your nginx.conf to see if you have any directives dumping to custom log.

run nginx -t to locate your nginx.conf.

# in ngingx.conf
error_log  /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log;
error_log  /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log  notice;
error_log  /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log  info;

Nginx is usually set up in /usr/local or /etc/. The server could be configured to dump logs to /var/log as well.

If you have an alternate location for your nginx install and all else fails, you could use the find command to locate your file of choice.

find /usr/ -path "*/nginx/*" -type f -name '*.log', where /usr/ is the folder you wish to start searching from.