If anyone is wondering why their log messages are appearing in multiple log files, here is one answer applying to *nix systems:
If your syslog.conf looks like this (assuming you use LOG_LOCAL0 for web app logging) :
local0.info /var/log/web/info.log
This will collect *all* messages of LOG_INFO level and higher, i.e everything except debug messages
Try this instead to ensure that only messages of the named log level go into the relevant log file:
local0.=info /var/log/web/info.log
Additionally, you may like to add this to ensure your messages don't end up in generic log files like "messages" "all" "syslog" and "debug":
local0.none /var/log/messages
local0.none /var/log/debug
etc
saves disk space among other things - more at "man syslog.conf"
syslog
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
syslog — Generate a system log message
Description
$priority
, string $message
)syslog() generates a log message that will be distributed by the system logger.
For information on setting up a user defined log handler, see the syslog.conf (5) Unix manual page. More information on the syslog facilities and option can be found in the man pages for syslog (3) on Unix machines.
Parameters
-
priority -
priorityis a combination of the facility and the level. Possible values are:syslog() Priorities (in descending order) Constant Description LOG_EMERGsystem is unusable LOG_ALERTaction must be taken immediately LOG_CRITcritical conditions LOG_ERRerror conditions LOG_WARNINGwarning conditions LOG_NOTICEnormal, but significant, condition LOG_INFOinformational message LOG_DEBUGdebug-level message -
message -
The message to send, except that the two characters %m will be replaced by the error message string (strerror) corresponding to the present value of errno.
Return Values
Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure.
Examples
Example #1 Using syslog()
<?php
// open syslog, include the process ID and also send
// the log to standard error, and use a user defined
// logging mechanism
openlog("myScriptLog", LOG_PID | LOG_PERROR, LOG_LOCAL0);
// some code
if (authorized_client()) {
// do something
} else {
// unauthorized client!
// log the attempt
$access = date("Y/m/d H:i:s");
syslog(LOG_WARNING, "Unauthorized client: $access {$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']} ({$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']})");
}
closelog();
?>
Notes
On Windows NT, the syslog service is emulated using the Event Log.
Note:
Use of LOG_LOCAL0 through LOG_LOCAL7 for the
facilityparameter of openlog() is not available in Windows.
See Also
- openlog() - Open connection to system logger
- closelog() - Close connection to system logger
Be aware when using syslog() that if you set the timezone of environment to be something other than the standard, syslog() may log the time to the log(s) with the wrong time zone information. For example:
<?php
openlog('mylog', LOG_PID | LOG_ODELAY,LOG_LOCAL4);
putenv('TZ=UTC');
syslog(LOG_INFO, 'UTC Log line');
putenv('TZ=US/Pacific');
syslog(LOG_INFO, 'US/Pacific Log line');
closelog();
?>
Viewing the /usr/log/messages log will display these two lines:
Apr 11 01:25:39 hostname mylog[1400]: UTC Log line
Apr 10 18:25:39 hostname mylog[1400]: US/Pacific Log line
Adam.
A word of warning; if you use openlog() to ready syslog() and your Apache threads accept multiple requests, you *must* call closelog() if Apache's error log is configured to write to syslog. Failure to do so will cause Apache's error log to write to whatever facility/ident was used in openlog.
Example, in httpd.conf you have:
ErrorLog syslog:local7
and in php you do:
<?php
openlog("myprogram", 0, LOG_LOCAL0);
syslog("My syslog message");
?>
From here on out, this Apache thread will write ErrorLog to local0 and under the process name "myprogram" and not httpd! Calling closelog() will fix this.
If you are using syslog-ng and want errors send to syslog then use ini setting "error_log = syslog" and add something like the following to your syslog-ng.conf:
destination php { file("/var/log/php.log" owner(root) group(devel) perm(0620)); };
log { source(src); filter(f_php); destination(php); };
I had a problem trying to issue a syslog message with IIS 5.1 under Windows XP. The function call seemed to succeed, but the event viewer showed that no entry was made.
Finally I found out that the user account used for the webserver (IUSR_<Computername>) did not have enough permissions to issue syslog alerts. I changed this by adding this user to the Users group instead of only Guest.
This work for me, to redirect logs to a separate syslog file
put this line in your /etc/syslog.conf :
local0.debug /var/log/php.log
Then restart syslogd:
/etc/init.d/syslog restart
php example:
<?php
define_syslog_variables();
openlog("TextLog", LOG_PID, LOG_LOCAL0);
$data = date("Y/m/d H:i:s");
syslog(LOG_DEBUG,"Messagge: $data");
closelog();
?>
The message string sent to the log file is limited to 500 characters.
This *does* actually goto the system log as configured in /etc/syslog.conf (such as /var/log/messages), it doesn't goto Apache's ErrorLog (such as /var/log/httpd/error_log). At least under my Debian Potato with Apache 1.3.23.
Use error_log() to be sure it gets into Apache's ErrorLog.
To set up a custom log file via the syslog daemon (FreeBSD in this case)...
Add to /etc/syslog.conf a line that says all errors from the httpd process are to go to a file called (for example) /var/log/httpd-php.log
!httpd
*.* {tab} /var/log/httpd-php.log
Note the tab, being a tab character! Next create a blank file to be written to. I'm sure there are 1e+6 ways to do this, but I choose
# cat > httpd-php.log << EOF
? EOF
Finally find your syslog daemon and send it a sighup to inform it of the change:
# ps ax | grep syslogd
133 ?? Ss 0:07.23 syslogd -s
# kill -1 133
Et voila! Php syslog calls will now arrive in /var/log/httpd-php.log
With FreeBSD I can use: syslog(LOG_INFO,"test");
BSD/OS does not support this, I had to use the literal values for the priority (158: local3.info):
syslog(158,"test");
Example of where to look for syslog's output: /var/log/httpd/access_log
(on Red Hat Linux Secure Server v6.2).
For the-header-file-enabled:
man 3 syslog defines the priorities, but not the integer values. For that you'll need to read your system header file.
Let's suppose I want to log an informational message in the mail log (which happens to be true). The man page tells me I want LOG_MAIL|LOG_INFO. So I look in /usr/include/sys/syslog.h and find (this happens to be Linux, your system could be different):
#define LOG_INFO 6 /* informational */
#define LOG_MAIL (2<<3) /* mail system */
2<<3 means shift 3 bits left, which means multiply by 8. So I want 2*8 + 6 = 22. syslog(22,"this message will appear in the mail log"); And indeed it does.
In Windows NT, use the following values of priority:
1 = error,
6 = info
If you have php.ini setup to send PHP errors to syslog, they will all get dumped into /var/log/messages (at least it does with RedHat 9 by default). I wanted to figure out how to get PHP errors to go to their own syslog file.
After some trial and error, I figured out what facility and priority PHP uses, which is "user.notice". So, to get your PHP errors going to a separate syslog file, put this line in your /etc/syslog.conf :
user.notice /var/log/php.log
Then restart syslogd:
/etc/init.d/syslog restart
Why PHP uses "user" as the facility I'm not sure, probably because it's the only one that works under Windows?
Monte
