Run this command, to check error logs:
tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log
I was looking for a different solution.
Error logs, by default, before any configuration is set, on my system (x86 Arch Linux), was found in:
/var/log/nginx/error.log
I found it in /usr/local/nginx/logs/*.
cd /var/log/nginx/
cat error.log
Type this command in the terminal:
sudo cat /var/log/nginx/error.log
You can use lsof (list of open files) in most cases to find open log files without knowing the configuration.
Example:
Find the PID of httpd (the same concept applies for nginx and other programs):
$ ps aux | grep httpd
...
root 17970 0.0 0.3 495964 64388 ? Ssl Oct29 3:45 /usr/sbin/httpd
...
Then search for open log files using lsof with the PID:
$ lsof -p 17970 | grep log
httpd 17970 root 2w REG 253,15 2278 6723 /var/log/httpd/error_log
httpd 17970 root 12w REG 253,15 0 1387 /var/log/httpd/access_log
If lsof prints nothing, even though you expected the log files to be found, issue the same command using sudo.
You can read a little more here.
It is a good practice to set where the access log should be in nginx configuring file . Using acces_log /path/ Like this.
keyval $remote_addr:$http_user_agent $seen zone=clients;
server { listen 443 ssl;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
if ($seen = "") {
set $seen 1;
set $logme 1;
}
access_log /tmp/sslparams.log sslparams if=$logme;
error_log /pathtolog/error.log;
# ...
}
Logs location on Linux servers:
Apache – /var/log/httpd/
IIS – C:\inetpub\wwwroot\
Node.js – /var/log/nodejs/
nginx – /var/log/nginx/
Passenger – /var/app/support/logs/
Puma – /var/log/puma/
Python – /opt/python/log/
Tomcat – /var/log/tomcat8
My ngninx logs are located here:
/usr/local/var/log/nginx/*
You can also check your nginx.conf to see if you have any directives dumping to custom log.
run nginx -t to locate your nginx.conf.
# in ngingx.conf
error_log /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log;
error_log /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log notice;
error_log /usr/local/var/log/nginx/error.log info;
Nginx is usually set up in /usr/local or /etc/. The server could be configured to dump logs to /var/log as well.
If you have an alternate location for your nginx install and all else fails, you could use the find command to locate your file of choice.
find /usr/ -path "*/nginx/*" -type f -name '*.log', where /usr/ is the folder you wish to start searching from.
Source: Stackoverflow.com