PHP's configuration setting 'error_log' is not working - php

Question

What am I doing wrong here?
I have error_log set in the .ini file along with error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT.
What else am I missing? This usually gave it to me. I want this set in the .ini file and not in my scripts.
Another interesting thing that is happening is that when I purposefully try and throw an error in one of my scripts, Apache restarts over and over again.
This is my event log after one error. Look at the timestamp.
Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 1700
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Child 1700: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Child 3008: Released the start mutex
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Child 1700: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Child 1700: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:23 2009] [notice] Child 1700: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:24 2009] [notice] Child 3008: All worker threads have exited.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:24 2009] [notice] Child 3008: Child process is exiting
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 3656
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Child 3656: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Child 3656: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Child 3656: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Child 3656: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:53 2009] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 3980
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 3980: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 3980: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 3980: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 3980: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 1600
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 1600: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 1600: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 1600: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:54 2009] [notice] Child 1600: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 1068
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Child 1068: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Child 1068: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Child 1068: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Child 1068: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Server built: Sep 28 2009 22:41:08
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:55 2009] [notice] Parent: Created child process 3220
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:56 2009] [notice] Child 3220: Child process is running
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:56 2009] [notice] Child 3220: Acquired the start mutex.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:56 2009] [notice] Child 3220: Starting 64 worker threads.
[Wed Nov 04 19:34:56 2009] [notice] Child 3220: Starting thread to listen on port 80.
This has been asked 1000 times and I have browsed through the different posts before posting this, but I have not found an answer. As long as I have been programming with PHP, this have always been a nightmare to get working.

Answer 1

Check PHP-FPM is not explicitly setting error_log:
Make sure the file /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf does not contain php_admin_value settings for error_log. Search for the following and comment them out using a semi-colon:
; NOTE: If these are set, ini_set('error_log', 'path') will have no effect
; inside your php code, and this will be forced to be the value always.
; php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/log/php-fpm/www-error.log
; php_admin_flag[log_errors] = on
Then restart php-fpm:
systemctl restart php-fpm
Check Apache .htaccess files are not setting the error_log value using
php_admin_value settings in the Apache configuration files cannot be overridden, so make sure you don’t have any php_admin_value for the error_log setting in the Apache configuration files. Also check for php_value settings just in case.
PHP Website - How to change configuration settings

Answer 2

Flimm's Troubleshooting Guide
Here is my troubleshooting guide to error_log() calls not working.
Look at your server's configuration to find out where the default error log file is.
This depends on which server you're using. To get you started, have
a look at Apache's ErrorLog option if you're using Apache or
Nginx's error_log option if you're using Nginx. Make sure it
is set to a file. If you're using a tool like Valet, note that it's
using server software like Nginx behind the scenes.
Check the permissions of your server's error log file. On Unix-like systems, it should be writeable by the correct user and group, and the permissions of the parent directory and all its ancestors need to be correct as well. Use chmod and chown.
Check the configuration of PHP in the .ini files. Specifically, check for log_errors = On and error_reporting = E_ALL | E_STRICT and error_log = /tmp/example/php_errors.log (see docs for log_errors, error_reporting and error_log configuration settings). To find the .ini file, look at the output of phpinfo();. If error_log is not set, by default it goes to the error log for the server, mentioned in the previous steps. If error_log is set to a file, it should already exist and be writeable, just like in previous steps. Remember to restart the server after configuration changes.
Check that PHP's settings aren't being changed by server configuration. Your server's configuration (even .htaccess) can change PHP configuration settings. In Apache, this is done using php_admin_value and php_admin_flag (docs). For instance, you may find in your .htaccess file this line: php_admin_flag[log_errors] = off. Remember to restart the server after configuration changes. At this point, you should be able to create a test file test.php with the contents <?php error_log("test");, restart your server, and open the URL in your browser, and you should be able to see test in your error log (either the server's, or the one specified by error_log = ). But keep reading.
Check that PHP's settings aren't being changed at run-time. The log_errors option can be changed at runtime by running ini_set('log_errors', 1);, and so can the other configuration options error_reporting and error_log. Also note there is a special error_reporting() PHP function which changes the configuration at run-time. Search your code-base for any invocations of ini_set or error_reporting. WordPress for example does run these depending on the value of WP_DEBUG.
Other things to look at: You may be having permission issues in SELinux (see this answer).

Answer 3

You also need to set log_errors = On in file php.ini.

Answer 4

In case anyone else is having trouble getting their local development environment to log errors, here's what fixed it for me:
On Windows, error_log must be set to the complete path to the log for error_log() to work (error_log = c:\apache\php_errors.log). However, if error_log = php_errors.log with no path, php will still be able to log startup errors such as
PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'ext\php_mysqli.dll' - The specified module could not be found

Answer 5

The problem I ran into was that the error log I had designated was write-protected. All my .htaccess settings were correct, but PHP just couldn't write to the error log, because it didn't have any permissions. This fixed it right up for me:
chmod 777 watermellon-app-errors.log
Obviously, you're going to want to change the .log part to whatever file you're using for a log.

Answer 6

If the error_log directive is set, the file will be used for recording PHP errors. When it is not set, errors will be logged to the Apache log. Take a look at error_log.
The error_log file and the directory it's in must be writable by the user that Apache is running under. If the file isn't being created, it's probably due to a permissions issue.
I don't know for sure why Apache would be crashing on you, but I'm guessing it's a permissions issue of some sort.

Answer 7

I don't understand why, but the error log is now working. Here is what I did.
I gave up and commented back out the error_log directive and closed the ini file. I ran the script with the parse error to see if Apache would still crash and I got the PHP error in the log file. This is freaky, because the ini file no longer has error_log enabled and my script is not using ini_set().

Answer 8

In my case, on a CentOS development server, after a full yum update, the permission on /var/log/http was changed to 700 and the user to 'root', so the user 'apache' wasn't able to enter or write into it.
It was still able to write into the existing file /var/log/httpd/error.log, but it wasn't able to create a new file, as I use date-suffixed log files.
Issuing the command
chown apache /var/log/httpd
solved the problem.

Answer 9

If you are using Fedora, SELinux (enabled by default) will prevent Apache / httpd from appending errors to your log file even when your file is specified in file php.ini and its containing directory has all permissions allowed.
You can see if this is happening by looking at your system log file in /var/log/messages
The ideal solution is to configure SELinux to allow access to the log file.
The quicker solution is to disable SELinux in /etc/selinux/config by setting SELINUX to disabled.
You'll need to reboot your system after doing this for the change to take effect.

Answer 10

For me, manually creating the file, /var/log/php_error.log, solved the issue:
In file php.ini, configure log to file
log_errors = On
error_log = /var/log/php_error.log
Restart Apache
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Create the log file, for example:
sudo touch /var/log/php_error.log
Give the correct rights (owner must be Apache)
sudo chown www-data:root /var/log/php_error.log
(And if not already set)
sudo chmod 0644 /var/log/php_error.log
Test this way, for example:
sudo vim /var/www/.../index.php
<html>
<body>
PHP file:
<?php
echo "Hello, World!";
trigger_error("User error in PHP", E_USER_ERROR);
?>
</body>
</html>
Check the error is written
sudo less /var/log/php_error.log

Answer 11

For further debugging:
phpinfo();
It shows the current error_log setting, next to the error_log value in phpinfo() and can be useful when a vhost isn't logging.
I ended up here after that setting got overridden from file php.ini and the vhost. I ended up logging to syslog.

Answer 12

As bradym said, check whether you have write permissions to the directory where you PHP error log is located for the Apache user. If you created a log file with written permissions it's not enough; the directory should have them too.

Answer 13

I had the same issue and fixed it by doing this:
chmod 0777 -R /var/log/apache2
apachectl restart
I think PHP runs as user www-data while access to /var/log/apache2 is limited to root. So, this fixes it.

Answer 14

The error_log = "C:\php\Log\error.log" line was not working for me either. The solution for me was that you shouldn't create the error.log yourself, because PHP will do it for you. See the PHP message board. I'm using PHP 5.2 on a Windows Server 2008 server.

Answer 15

This did the trick for me.
setsebool -P httpd_unified 1
Please note, this would be the preferred method below to try first:
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t 'errorLogNameHere.error.log
restorecon -v 'errorLogNameHere.error.log'
This answer was derived from the logs from executing this command line:
journalctl -xe
Further information on the system I was running on:
PHP 7.0 and CentOS 7
I am not sure if it's not obvious, but the issue was Apache's configuration to writing files. I did try chmod 777, chmod a+w on the logging directory, but this didn't work for me.