App logs and server logs

An app’s log files contain log entries related to requests received by the app.

Server log files contain log entries related to the services running on the server as well as server events such as package installation.

View logs in the dashboard

To view server logs:

1. Go to the Servers page in the dashboard and click on the name of the server.
2. Click on Logs.
3. Select the log file to view.

To view app logs:

1. Go to the Apps page in the dashboard and click on the name of the app.
2. Click on Logs.
3. Select the log file to view.

View logs through SSH

To view app logs through SSH, you must be logged into a server as either the system user the app belongs to or as root.

To view server logs through SSH, you must be logged into a server as root.

To show the full contents of a log file, use cat:

cat path/to/log

To show the last 100 lines of a log file, use tail:

tail -n 100 path/to/log

To search a log file for a string of characters, use grep -F:

grep -F "string to search for" path/to/log

To search a log file using a regular expression, use grep:

grep "REGULAR_EXPRESSION" path/to/log

View compressed logs

Compressed log files have a .gz file extension.

To show the full contents of a compressed log file, use zcat:

zcat path/to/log.2.gz

To show the last 100 lines of a compressed log file, pipe the output of zcat to tail:

zcat path/to/log.2.gz | tail -n 100

To search a compressed log file for a string of characters, use zgrep -F:

zgrep -F "string to search for" path/to/log.2.gz

To search a compressed log file using a regular expression, use zgrep:

zgrep "REGULAR_EXPRESSION" path/to/log.2.gz

Log rotation

Log files are automatically rotated to limit disk space usage. To further reduce disk space usage, old log files are compressed.

When a log file is rotated:

1. A new log file is created and subsequent log entries are written to the new log file.
2. The suffix .1 is added to the previous log file which indicates it is the most recently rotated log file.
3. Older rotated log files are renamed to .2, .3, etc.
4. Older rotated log files are compressed and have a .gz suffix added to their file name.

App log files such as access logs are rotated daily. Rotated app log files are kept for one week before they are deleted.

For server logs such as system and service logs, the frequency of rotation and how long rotated logs are kept before deletion depends on the specific log file.

Caution

If you decide to manually delete log files rather than letting old log files be automatically deleted during log rotation, it is only safe to delete log files that have file names ending in .1 or .gz. Deleting other log files may break your server.

List of log files

The location and format of each log file is available in the log file’s documentation linked below.

Scope	Log file	Description
App	Nginx access log	Requests received by Nginx.
App	Nginx error log	Errors related to Nginx requests.
App	Apache access log	Requests received by Apache.
App	Apache error log	Errors related to Apache requests.
App	PHP access log	Requests received by PHP.
App	PHP error log	Errors related to PHP requests.
App	PHP slow request log	Details of slow PHP script executions.
App	PHP mail log	Mail sent with PHP’s mail() function.
Server	System log	System and service events.
Server	MySQL service log	MySQL service events and errors.
Server	MySQL slow query log	Details of slow SQL query execution.
Server	Nginx service log	Nginx service events and errors.
Server	Apache service log	Apache service events and errors.
Server	PHP-FPM service log	PHP-FPM service events and errors.
Server	SSH activity log	SSH logins and failed login attempts.
Server	Mail delivery log	Outbound email delivery attempts.
Server	Cron service log	Scheduled command executions.
Server	Package manager log	Package installations and updates.