Recipe 4.9 Logging for Each Virtual Host

Problem

You want each virtual host to have its own logfiles.

Solution

Specify Errorlog and CustomLog within each virtual host declaration:

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName   waldo.example.com
    DocumentRoot /home/waldo/www/htdocs

    ErrorLog     /home/waldo/www/logs/error_log
    CustomLog    /home/waldo/www/logs/access_log combined
</VirtualHost>

Discussion

The various logging directives can be placed either in the main body of your configuration file or within a <VirtualHost> section. When it is placed within a virtual host, log entries for that virtual host go in the specified logfile, rather than into the log file(s) defined in the main server configuration.

Each logfile counts against the total number of files and network connections your server is allowed to have. If you have 100 virtual hosts, each with its own error and activity log, that's 200 open channels—and if the server's quota is 256, you can only handle 56 concurrent requests at any one time.

In the recipe given here, the logfiles are placed within the home directory of a particular user, rather than in the main log directory. This gives you easier access to those files, but you still need to take adequate precautions to set the permissions on the directory in question. Consult Chapter 6 for a discussion on file permissions.

See Also

• Chapter 3

• Chapter 6