[CentOS] Redirecting PHP error messages into a log file

[Keith Roberts]

On Sat, 31 Jul 2010, Alexander Farber wrote:

> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> From: Alexander Farber <alexander.farber at gmail.com>
> Subject: [CentOS] Redirecting PHP error messages into a log file
> 
> Hello,
>
> I'm using CentOS release 5.5 x86_64 with the stock php-5.1.6-27.el5
> and would like to redirect PHP messages into /var/log/httpd/php_log
>
> First I tried adding that file name to /etc/php.ini:
> error_log = "/var/log/httpd/php_log"
> and restarted httpd, but the file didn't appear.
> I've touched it and changed owner to apache.apache,
> but that didn't help.

It's a bit tricky setting up PHP error logging to a seperate 
file. This works for me on 32bit, Centos 5.5 and Fedora 12, 
and previous Fedora versions.

Here are my settings:

SELinux disabled at boot time.

/etc/php.ini file:

; Besides displaying errors, PHP can also log errors to locations such as a 
; server-specific log, STDERR, or a location specified by the error_log
; directive found below. While errors should not be displayed on productions
; servers they should still be monitored and logging is a great way to do that.
; Default Value: Off
; Development Value: On
; Production Value: On
; 
http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.log-errors
log_errors = ON


; Set maximum length of log_errors. In error_log information about the source is
; added. The default is 1024 and 0 allows to not apply any maximum length at all.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.log-errors-max-len
log_errors_max_len = 1024

; Do not log repeated messages. Repeated errors must occur in same file on same
; line unless ignore_repeated_source is set true.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.ignore-repeated-errors
ignore_repeated_errors = Off

; Ignore source of message when ignoring repeated messages. When this setting
; is On you will not log errors with repeated messages from different files or
; source lines.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.ignore-repeated-source
ignore_repeated_source = Off

; Log errors to specified file. PHP's default behavior is to leave this value
; empty.
; http://www.php.net/manual/en/errorfunc.configuration.php#ini.error-log
; Log errors to syslog or specified file (Event Log on NT, not valid in Windows 95).
;error_log = syslog
error_log = /var/log/apache/php_error_log

The file permissions for my php error log are:

[root at karsites apache]# ls -l php*
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 91472 2010-07-31 08:00 php_error_log
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root     0 2008-05-29 13:30 php_error_log.skel
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root     0 2008-05-29 13:30 php_mail_log
[root at karsites apache]#

If the PHP error log file is not set up correctly, then PHP 
will just output the errors to the apache error log file 
instead.

HTH

Keith Roberts