How to modify Apache httpd logging

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
  • Red Hat Software Collections (RHSCL)
  • Red Hat JBoss Web Server (JWS)
  • Red Hat JBoss Core Services (JBCS)
  • Apache Web Server (httpd)

Issue

  • How to increase logging level to debug apache issues
  • How to reduce the verbosity of the Apache httpd log
  • How to customize log level per module
  • How to customize log level per directory
  • How to enable SSL debug in Apache httpd
  • We have some servers dedicated to providing Apache httpd services and we do not need the logging that is produced in the file /var/log/httpd/*. What is the recommended way to tune the httpd.conf file to reduce this logging to little or none at all?

Resolution

  • Edit httpd.conf file and modify the Content from httpd.apache.org is not included.LogLevel to tune the verbosity of error_log.

    • From least verbose to most verbose: emerg, alert, crit, error, warn, notice, info, or debug. And there's additional verbose log levels from trace1 to trace8 in Apache httpd 2.4. It defaults to warn.
    • Note: the level notice cannot be suppressed regardless of the LogLevel setting as noted in Apache's documentation.

  • For example, to enable debug logging change from:

    LogLevel warn

    to:

    LogLevel debug

    in httpd.conf. Then restart the httpd service:

    ]# service httpd restart

  • Similarly, for Apache httpd 2.4.x the log level can be defined per module and also per directory:

    LogLevel info ssl:debug proxy:trace8 proxy_ajp:trace8 

    LogLevel info
<Directory "/var/www/html/myapp">
  LogLevel debug
</Directory>

  • Afterwards, to supply those logs to Red Hat Support, command sosreport can be run with the apache option.

    ]# sosreport -k apache.log=on
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