Changing Nginx Log File Location

Question

I can't get any changes in the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf http block to be used. I'm starting with the simplest thing - I want to modify the name of access.log to something else (ie a.log). It is a vanilla nginx install (no custom config files yet). Here's what I know:

changing a value in the head of nginx.conf does affect the configuration (changing worker_processes 4 to worker_processes 2 does change the # of workers)
Making a syntax error in nginx.conf's http block does cause nginx to throw an error on restart
Changing access_log to access_log /var/log/nginx/a.log does not modify the location of the log, and nginx in fact continues logging to /var/log/nginx/access.log

Here is a snippet of my nginx.conf file:

user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {
        worker_connections 768;
}

http {
        include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
        default_type application/octet-stream;

        access_log /var/log/nginx/a.log;
        #....
}

Is it something as simple as I'm modifying an http block that gets overwritten by some other config file? Thanks for the help.

Try "grep -r /var/log/nginx/access.log /etc/nginx" and "grep -r include /etc/nginx". — tobixen
– tobixen, Commented Feb 14, 2015 at 18:33
A "vanilla" installation may vary depending on what distro you are using, but it could be some file like /etc/nginx/conf.d/default specifying how the default vhost should work. — tobixen
– tobixen, Commented Feb 14, 2015 at 18:34
"grep -r /var/log/nginx/access.log /etc/nginx" returns nothing and "grep -r include /etc/nginx" returns "/etc/nginx/nginx.conf: include /etc/nginx/mime.types; /etc/nginx/nginx.conf: #include /etc/nginx/naxsi_core.rules; /etc/nginx/nginx.conf: include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; /etc/nginx/nginx.conf: include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;" — AJBradley
– AJBradley, Commented Feb 14, 2015 at 18:36
Thanks for the input. It's an ubuntu distro. No files in conf.d. — AJBradley
– AJBradley, Commented Feb 14, 2015 at 18:38
maybe you have a /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default file then? — tobixen
– tobixen, Commented Feb 16, 2015 at 13:32

Lich4r · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-14 19:25:03Z

3

Isn't your access_log also defined in a server block ? Have a look at the default config in nginx/sites-enabled/. In this case the value in http block is overwritten by the one in the lower block.

answered Feb 14, 2015 at 19:25

Lich4r

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1 Comment

AJBradley Over a year ago

Thanks! I needed to put the change to the access log in the server block. To alter the format of the log, I had to put a log_format line in the nginx.conf http block and now everything is working as expected.

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