{"id":90,"date":"2012-06-22T17:22:33","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T17:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cpanelplesk.com\/wp62\/?p=90"},"modified":"2021-02-18T16:27:12","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T16:27:12","slug":"cpanel-log-locations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cpanelplesk.com\/wp62\/cpanel-log-locations\/","title":{"rendered":"cPanel log file locations: Apache, Email, FTP, MySQL, WHM, Access and Error"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previously, we wrote this comprehensive blog post, with all the possible cPanel log files and the log locations. But there was not much information on how to use those log files. So I am redoing the post to have that necessary information as my readers asked.<\/p>\n

The post will turn into a cPanel logs cheat sheet over time, helping our users find anything within CPanel log files. You better bookmark it \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

While working with cPanel logs, there are two fundamental questions.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How to search<\/li>\n
  2. Where are the logs located<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We will address all three one by one.<\/p>\n

    How to search cPanel log files?<\/h2>\n

    This is the primary concern of a part for novice cPanel admins i “How to search cPanel logs efficiently”. So here is a short lesson on that too.<\/p>\n

    Searching cPanel logs files are the same as searching any text file within Linux. You will be searching a lot of files for specific keywords or phrases. In cPanel shared hosting servers, these phrases are usually “domain names”, email addresses, and cPanel user names.<\/p>\n

    cPanel Log file can grow very large and are usually filled with a great deal of information that we do not need in day-to-day troubleshooting and management tasks. Due to the size of log files going through a file one line at a time is way out of the question. And Opening the file in any text editor like nano or vi is also of not much help as large files get too much slow, and it will be very time-consuming and tedious to do that this way.
    \nAs a cPanel server admin, you need to able to pinpoint warnings and errors, and the best tool to do that is “grep”
    \ngrep command is a versatile option to search cPanel log files. the syntax to use grep is<\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n
    grep [options] [pattern] [file]<\/pre>\n
    example:<\/p>\n
    grep 'keyword' \/path\/to\/file.log<\/pre>\n
     <\/p>\n
    The most important is [keyword] here; it is what you want to search. If you want to search logs of a domain “my-examp.com” in apache logs, then it will be<\/p>\n
    grep 'my-example.com' \/usr\/local\/apache\/logs\/error_log<\/pre>\n
     <\/p>\n
    Since Linux and its commands and everything within is case sensitive, you may miss cPanel log file searches because of it. To take care of this problem, you need to search log files as case insensitive. We do it with -i option<\/p>\n
    grep -i 'my-example.com' \/usr\/local\/apache\/logs\/error_log<\/pre>\n
     <\/p>\n
    The output would show many many lines if my-example.com were a problem creating one. And in that case, it all just scrolls past the terminal screen until it reaches the end. And then you have to scroll up to read all that. Here we can use the command “less”.
    \nSo final command to search cPanel log files that you will be using all the time will become<\/p>\n
    grep -i 'my-example.com' \/usr\/local\/apache\/logs\/error_log | less<\/pre>\n
     <\/p>\n
    One more thing that you will sometimes need within cPanel log file is context. It is to see what happened before this error and what after. For that, you may use some grep option that we will address in the next update. Or if you can buy cPanel administration services here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
    Where are the cPanel logs?<\/h4>\n
    This is what this article initially was about initially. We have described with each log file what information that log file holds. Different applications might have more than one log file, each containing a different type of information. Usually, there are usage logs, and there are error logs. For example, apache has a separate file to log access activity and another for apache error logs.
    \ncPanel logs are most activity that happens on a server to log files so you can go back and check log records for issues, instead of having to be on the server at the time of them occurring.<\/p>\n
     <\/p>\n
    cPanel Email logs<\/h3>\n
    Exim logs:<\/strong><\/p>\n