Nginx cannot write into access.log

Question

When nginx start, it creates log file "access.log" with 0 size. But no log are written in it. error.log works fine.

nginx.conf:

http {
    access_log /usr/local/webserver/nginx/logs/access.log combined;
    ....
}

The logs file is:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Mar  4 00:54 access.log
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 3903 Mar  4 00:54 error.log

I am totally confused. @_@

Is it a permission issue?

However, in the later part of nginx.conf, in the server {} section, the access_log works! Why http {} section not working?

Mark · Answer 1 · 2018-06-12T01:19:57.033

22

Depending on your configuration, nginx master process and worker processes likely run as different users.

To see users and groups for nginx processes:

ps -eo "%U %G %a" | grep nginx

root     root     nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -c /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
www-data www-data nginx: worker process

The worker process user needs write permission for the log file.

To see file permissions of access.log:

ls -l /var/log/nginx/access.log
-rw-r----- 1 www-data www-data 0 Apr 29  2012 /var/log/nginx/access.log

In this case, access log is owned by the nginx worker process and has write access.

See also log rotation guide for ubuntu.

edited Jun 12 '18 at 01:19

answered Mar 20 '14 at 01:58

Mark

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logrotate is not a daemon, its a cronjob – Sebastian Jan 13 '17 at 15:02
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Good point @Sebastian. In this case the definition of daemon is derived from the ancient greek: 'a benevolent or benign nature spirit'. ;-) – Mark Jan 13 '17 at 20:57
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logrotate's true nature :) @Mark – Sebastian Jan 14 '17 at 21:13
Wonderful information, thanks; it was logrotate giving me issues! – Simon Mar 10 '23 at 07:01

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered May 25 '16 at 06:19

9

I had a similar problem where the access logs file was not getting written to, but the error log file was working fine. The permissions were also fine for me. I got it to fix itself by forcing the nginx process to reload log files using

kill -USR1 `cat /var/run/nginx.pid`

where /var/run/nginx.pid is the path to your nginx PID file

answered May 25 '16 at 06:19

Animesh Jain

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Just doing `sudo service nginx restart` on Ubuntu made it start writing the Nginx acces.log again for me. (after I corrected the permissions of the right user) – program247365 Jun 28 '17 at 00:36

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 04 '12 at 15:35

3

You must bind the user and group nginx to your log-files.

chown nginx:nginx access.log
chown nginx:nginx error.log

Can you post your complete nginx.conf? With pastebin for example?

EDIT: in every section you must define the keyword like "combined"!

edited Mar 04 '12 at 15:35

Matt Fenwick

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answered Mar 04 '12 at 07:25

daemonTutorials

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it's www-data:www-data in ubuntu – holms Mar 03 '16 at 03:38
4

If nginx is unable to write to the logs it created in the first place, chmod'ing the files is not tackling the root cause of the problem. You probably need to look at the nginx config. – nick fox Jun 30 '16 at 10:20
@holms by default, yes. – sitilge Dec 14 '16 at 12:35

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 28 '20 at 08:51

0

One situation I have encountered is that the disk is full

answered Jul 28 '20 at 08:51

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Nginx cannot write into access.log

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