PHP Output to Syslog on Ubuntu

Posted by Paul on 26th November 2009

There are just a few things you need to know in order to output trace or error information to syslog on an Ubuntu system from PHP (the following is probably true for other Debian-based distributions, too).

• Set error logging to syslog in php.ini (the system-wide php.ini can be found at /etc/php5/php.ini):

error_log = syslog

• Restart Apache:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Use the error_log() function to output your error messages.

• View the output of error messages:

$ tail -f /var/log/syslog

The -f flag causes new messages to be appended to the output of tail.