Log to a file

[bmccorm2]

Sorry for noob question, but it seems the logs go to stdout, can i redirect them to a log file instead?

[rhansen]

Which logs are you referring to?

• nginx access logs already go to a file (/var/log/nginx/access.log)
• nginx error logs and docker-gen logs go to stderr (not currently configurable), which should be captured in docker logs.
• nginx-proxy startup messages go to a mix of stderr and stdout depending on severity (not currently configurable), which should be captured in docker logs.

[bmccorm2]

Thanks. I think this corresponds to your point # 2 - currently my logs point to stdout and stderr and you said this was not configurable. So there is no way to create a volume and get these logs on the host machine? Thanks!

/var/log/nginx # ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            11 Feb 11 03:03 access.log -> /dev/stdout
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            11 Feb 11 03:03 error.log -> /dev/stderr

[SchoNie]

If you want to capture access.log and error.log from nginx, that corresponds to point # 1 from rhansen.
You can bind mount a local folder to /var/log/nginx/ and the logs will be written to a persistent location.

You can add a volume to your docker compose. (are you using compose? if you post your complete file I can help to adjust)

    volumes:
      - "./accesslogs/:/var/log/nginx/"

Then the access.log + error.log and written to "accesslogs" subfolder relative to the docker-compose.yml
Make sure you do some kind of logrotation to prevent from filling up your disk.

[bmccorm2]

Cool thanks. I looked at those files in the container and they were blank (because they were redirected to stdout) - but when i mounted a volume through docker-compose it worked great. Thanks again!