One Stop Shop Log file Locations for Admins

Overview

This article will help you identify the locations of various log files that you can use to troubleshoot issues with the different applications running on your cPanel/WHM servers.

General Logs

/var/log/messages

• This file contains the login session information and general error messages related to services running on the server, like FTP.
• Example logs :
  • ... systemd: Started Session 4001279 of user root.
    
  • ... Firewall: *TCP_OUT Blocked* IN= OUT=eth0 SRC=192.81.210.70 DST=10.4.4.48 LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=43284 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=57976 DPT=8086 WINDOW=29200 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 UID=979 GID=974 
  • ... lfd[27097]: SYSLOG check [VC7x2qhfgjqKbf9]

/var/log/secure

• This file contains the login attempts for the SSH service (including rsync and scp).
• Sample logs :
  • ... sshd[8619]: Connection closed by 152.17.48.66 port 50888 [preauth]
  • ... sshd[17407]: Accepted publickey for iswebdev from 152.17.63.254 port 64126 ssh2: RSA SHA256:..
  • ... sshd[17407]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user iswebdev by (uid=0)

Apache Logs

/var/log/apache2/access_log

• Access log - This file contains the access logs for web servers and Applications.

/var/log/apache2/error_log

• Error log - This file contains the error logs for web servers and Applications. 

/var/log/apache2/domlogs or /etc/apache2/logs/domlogs;

• User logs - This directory contains the FTP transaction logs for domains.

 cPanel & WHM Logs

/home/username/.cpanel/logs

• This directory contains records of errors within a user’s task queue.

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/access_log

• Access Log - This file shows records of when a cPanel user accesses their account.

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log

• Error Log - This file contains general cPanel & WHM errors such as those related to fatal or timeout exceeded errors
• Sample log:
  • [2022-01-25 22:04:33 +0000] warn [update_quota_cache] Cpanel::Exception::IO::FileWriteError/(XID 56vwtn) The system failed to write to the file “/home/clarzsit/.cpanel/email_accounts.json.lock-93e3e2db25ac-de3b1315-26d” because of an error: Disk quota exceeded

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/cpbackup

• This directory contains the cPanel backup log files.

/var/cpanel/logs

• This directory contains account transfer log files and various other miscellaneous log files from a few cpanel plugins which can be useful in certain situations.

Mail Logs

/var/log/maillog

• This file contains entries from Dovecot (mail log plugin) that include IMAP and POP3 login attempts and local mail delivery attempts. This log also contains Apache SpamAssassin scores.

/var/log/exim_mainlog

• This file contains Exim’s mail receipt and delivery logs for the cPanel account’s domains.

Memory Usage

/var/log/munin

• This file contains logs from Munin which is a cPanel plugin that displays information about CPU, Exim, Apache, MySQL usage, and other information.

Database Logs

/var/log/mysqld.log

• This file contains information about the cPanel account’s MySQL databases and errors in MySQL 5.7 and later and MariaDB 10.3 and later.

Installatron Logs

/var/installatron/logs

• This directory contains various log files related to the Installatron application on the cPanel server.
  • error_log - View the errors for the installatron tasks running on the server. 
  • task_log - View the logs for the individual installatron tasks running on the server.

Jetbackup Logs

/usr/local/jetapps/var/log/jetbackup

• This directory contains logs for the various jetbackup jobs which include backup, restore, clone, system (daily) and few other logs which can help with troubleshooting Jetbackup issues.

WHMCS Logs

WHMCS provides the ability to view the admin logins, sent and received email communications, domain lookups and other details through various logs which are available through the dashboard whose location may vary based on your WHMCS version.

• For WHMCS versions prior to v8.0, they are available under Utilities > Logs.
• For WHMCS versions v8.0 and higher, they are available under Configuration (spanner icon) > System Logs. The different logs can be viewed by selecting from the menu on the left-side of the page.
  

References -

The above information was obtained after referring to the vendor documentation available for the various products that we use. If you need detailed information about additional logs that may be available, the various individual vendor articles are listed below :

• cPanel documentation - https://docs.cpanel.net/knowledge-base/cpanel-product/the-cpanel-log-files/
• Installatron documentation - https://installatron.com/docs/admin/guide#2.2
• Jetbackup documentation - https://docs.jetbackup.com/manual/whm/Logs/systemLogs.html 
• WHMCS documentation - https://docs.whmcs.com/System_Logs