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GodziLaravel's avatar

Persistent Laravel Log Permission Error

Hello Laravel community,

I've recently encountered a peculiar log file permission issue that has been persistent despite various attempts to resolve it. I'm reaching out to the community for insights and suggestions.

Issue Overview: On numerous occasions, I have faced log file permission errors in Laravel. However, the latest incident was triggered intentionally using artisan tinker to write a log entry. Surprisingly, the log file was created with root ownership:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50 Feb 5 09:11 laravel-2024-02-05.log

Subsequently, when attempting to write to the log file using Laravel code, the application returned the following

error:

The stream or file "/data/www/****.com/storage/logs/laravel-2024-02-05.log" could not be opened in append mode: Failed to open stream: Permission denied The exception occurred while attempting to log

But when the log file is created on the first time by an error in code (not created by artisan tinker)

-rw-r--r-- 1 www-data www-data     20232 Feb  5 10:21 laravel-2024-02-05.log

Attempts to Resolve: In an effort to address this issue, I've executed the following commands:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data storage/logs
sudo chmod -R 755 storage/logs
Despite these attempts, the problem persists.

If you've encountered a similar problem or have expertise in this area, your guidance would be highly appreciated.

0 likes
2 replies
s4muel's avatar

there are three main "creators" of the file:

  1. www-data user (apache or nginx server)
  2. user defined when running scheduled commands defined cron (root, www-data or whoever specified)
  3. your local user when running php artisan tinker (either your non-privileged account, or a root)

the easiest way is to use the same user all the time

  1. no tweaking needed
  2. if running scheduled commands, have a look at /etc/cron.d/ ... or users crontab and try to run it under www-data user
  3. when running php artisan tinker use sudo. sudo -u www-data php artisan tinker that way the log files shgould be created under the same user, so you have appropriate permissions all the time

but i would suggest looking at "extended acl" (setfacl command, use google to get some explanation) which can handle the permissions "on steroids", but it might be a pain to grasp at first

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