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Blankman
Asked: 2010-06-01 11:26:00 +0800 CST

nginx error log was huge, so I deleted and created a new one, now nginx won't start

  • 772

I deleted the /var/log/nginx/error.log file, and then created a new one using:

sudo nano error.log

Doing ls -la shows that the error.log and access.log have the same permissions.

When I try and start nginx I get the error:

alert: could not open error log file: open() "/var/log/nginx/error.log" failed permission denited.

Update

When trying to start nginx, I am also seeing:

emerg: /var/run/nginx.pid failed 13: permission denied.

ubuntu log-files nginx

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This doesn't solve your problem, but in the future, if you do

    cat /dev/null > /file/you/want/to/wipe-out

    you will copy over the contents of the file with nothing, and keep all permissions in tact.

    Not nginx-speicific, but Additionally, make sure you are running the application as the user it is supposed to run as. If you ever ran it as root, all the permissions are going to be owned by root, so other users won't be able to run it.

    • 27

  2. The usual way to rotate the logs with NginX is to rename the file, and then /etc/init.d/nginx reload. The server starts a new file, and you can do what you wish with the old.

    You may also find it useful to edit the configuration to not log as much....

    • 7

  3. have a look in the nginx config, check who the server is running as - at a guess the user will be nginx

    so :

    chown nginx: /var/run/nginx.pid chown -R nginx: /var/log/nginx

    Should do the trick.

    • 2

  4. Delete the error.log file and nginx will create it itself.

    • 1

  5. To re-size the file to 0 bytes, without having to re-load or re-start nginx, use the truncate command:

    sudo truncate --size 0 /var/log/nginx/access.log

    Followed the guidance of this post due to my use case requiring the use of sudo.

    • 1

  6. First try deleting the file, if that doesn't work check that the nobody user has the right permissions:
    http://derekneely.com/2009/06/nginx-failed-13-permission-denied-while-reading-upstream/

    • 0