PHP error_log method doesn't write errors to my error log file

Question

The PHP error_log method does not write errors to the custom error log file. It will only write to /var/log/apache2/php_error.log

Here are the logging settings in my php.ini:

error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_NOTICE
display_errors = Off
log_errors = On
log_errors_max_len = 0 ; also tried with 9999999
error_log = /var/log/apache2/php_errors.log

PHP writes its errors to the regular Apache error log (/var/log/apache2/error.log) rather than the one I specified above.

Things I already tried:

1. I stopped and restarted apache after changing the php.ini file
2. The file /var/log/apache2/php_errors.log is 777 permissions and the file exists.
3. There are no other overriding php.ini files. (There is /etc/php5/cli/php.ini but I'm not using cli).
4. There are no other error_log = xxx settings further down the php.ini file which could overrule the first one
5. phpinfo() says error_log = /var/log/apache2/php_errors.log (i.e. the correct file), both under Local Value and Master Value
6. The test script I'm using to generate errors doesn't contain any ini_set calls

(FYI: I'm using Apache/2.2.17 and PHP/5.3.5-1ubuntu7.2 on Ubuntu 11.04)

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I'd like to answer this as it's a high result on Google even though it's an old question.

I solved this by adding write permissions for all users on the log directory.

In my case, the user 'http' needed to be able to write to /var/log/httpd/ so I ran

# chmod a+w /var/log/httpd

If the file already exists, it may help to delete it first and allow Apache to create it.

My php.ini file included the entire path, also.

error_log = /var/log/httpd/php_errors.log

Answer 2

You could try specifying the filename like this:

I'm using Apache 2.2.22 on Ubuntu.

Use this PHP command:

error_log("eric", 3, "/home/el/error.log");

The first parameter is the message to be sent to the error log. The 2nd parameter 3 means "expect a filename destination. The third parameter is the destination.

Create the file /home/el/error.log and set its ownership to this:

el@apollo:~$ ll error.log
-rwxrwxr-x 1 www-data www-data 7 Dec 13 14:30 error.log

When the PHP interprets the error_log method, it appends the message to your file.

Source: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.error-log.php