Important Log files on cpanel server
Its very important to know the location of logs for troubleshooting and investigating the issues. Logs help us to understand the nature of problem. This info-graphics will cover the location of logs for various services like Cpanel, Apache, Exim, Mysql and FTP server.
The following log file information shows system related logs location, secure login logs, audit logs and most important server logs which is /var/log/messages.
Apache Logs
Apache is the most popular web server and comes by default on cpanel based servers. Like any other server service apache also writes logs in two different file i.e access log and error log. These logs are very helpful to find problems with apache server, syntax related errors and who is accessing what pages through the access log files. Though Individual site has its own traffic log file located under different path. But general troubleshooting on apache can be done using these two log files ie. error_log and access_log .
Exim Logs
Exim is Mail transfer agent and comes pre-installed with Cpanel. Exim has three primary log file i.e exim_mainlog, exim_rejectlog and exim_paniclog, The main log file shows SMTP transfer logs where you can asses if the email was successfully delivered or not. Reject log will show incoming emails rejection and panic log will show logs related with exim server if failed.
Mysql Logs
Mysql server also comes by default with cpanel and every piece of information about mysql startup, shutdown or database errors are stored in single file that is /var/lib/mysql/hostname.err file. The path of the file can be changed as per your system configurations, You can monitor the log file with tail command and see mysql related activies, More important it can show which database tables are corrupted and needs repairing.
Cpanel Logs
Cpanel logs files location are located under different folder. The log file stores information about cpanel activity , accounting functions, server service status logs , authentication logs and license error logs. The following infographics shows the logs files location and what logs are being stored.