Find Important Log Files

This page describes:

• Home directory
• System logger: syslog
• Rotate your logs with logrotate
• Mongrel logs
• Environment log file
• Nginx logs
• Nginx configuration
• Monit log
• Monit configuration
• Passenger 3 log
• Unicorn log
• Chef recipe logs

Use the following substitutions for illustration:
Username: deploy
Application name: app_name
Environment: production

Home directory

A user home directory is created for you:

/home/deploy

If you look closely, this is actually a symlink to the persistent /data device. Therefore, you can safely store items in the home directory. You will see that your home directory symlinks to:

/data/homedirs/deploy

System logger: syslog

In the syslog you find system messages, monit restart calls, cron job notifications and various other useful bits of information.

/var/log/syslog

Rotate your logs with logrotate

By default, all parts of the stack are under logrotate to properly rotate and gzip old logs. The individual configuration files are found here:

/etc/logrotate.d/

Each configuration file can contain the following directives:

• daily/weekly/monthly/yearly: Frequency at which log files are rotated.
• rotate [n]: Log files are rotated n times before being removed or mailed to the address specified in a mail directive. If count is 0, old versions are removed rather than rotated.
• missingok: If the log file is missing, go on to the next one without issuing an error message.

Refer to Logrotate for more information.

Mongrel logs

If you have mongrels, your logs exist here:

/var/log/engineyard/mongrel/app_name/

Environment log file

If you need access to the production.log you can find it here:

/data/app_name/shared/log/production.log

Nginx logs

We configure nginx to split access and error into two files:

/var/log/engineyard/nginx/app_name.access.log
/var/log/engineyard/nginx/app_name.error.log

Nginx configuration

Nginx configuration is symlinked from /data/nginx to /etc/nginx to ensure that it persists when the instance is shutdown.

/data/nginx

A configuration for your application is automatically generated and you will find it here:

/data/nginx/servers/app_name.conf

Monit log

Monit log information is sent to the system logger. See System logger: syslog above.

Monit configuration

Monit configuration files are located here:

/etc/monit.d/

If you are running a mongrel instance, you should see your monit and mongrel configurations here:

/etc/monit.d/mongrel.app_name.monitrc

When adding additional services under monit, we recommend you create a new file ending in .monitrc according to the same naming convention. For example:

sphinx.app_name.monitrc dj.app_name.monitrc

If you’d like to edit the master monit configuration, you can do so here:

/etc/monitrc

Passenger log

Passenger 3 and 4 send log information to:

/var/log/nginx/passenger.log

Passenger 5 sends log information to:

/data/app_name/current/log/passenger.<port>.log

Unicorn log

Unicorn sends log information to three log files in the /data/app_name/current/log directory:

• /data/app_name/current/log/unicorn.log
• /data/app_name/current/log/unicorn.stderr.log
• /data/app_name/current/log/unicorn.stout.log

Chef recipe logs

See Log files from Chef recipes.

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