cPanel Log Files And Where To Find Them

cPanel has a vast amount of log files which can be reviewed when errors occur. Whether you’re seeing an Internal Server Error or a blank page the cPanel log files will contain all of the information needed to diagnose and fix most issues. Here we are going to point out the cPanel log files mostly used and show you how to find information in these files. If you need log files related to email like send and receive information and Exim then you can check our Exim Log Files post which details all the information related to Exim.

Apache Log File

The Apache log file will contain any information related to your HTTP service so, any error displayed on site like an Internal Server Error will be written to this file. You can search the file for specific information using the grep command below. Replace [USERNAME] with the cPanel user having issues to bring back a full list of log incidents for that user.

grep [USERNAME] /var/log/apache2/error_log

cPanel Access Log

The cPanel Access Log will keep a record of login and logout actions by cPanel users and WHM users. The file writes a new entry on each line in the format [IP] [DATE&TIME] [ACTION]. The cPanel Access log file can be found at;

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/access_log.

cPanel Error Log

Although the cPanel Error Log contains errors related to cPanel it also contains information on when certain actions are taken. For example, if a user removed a MySQL database that information will be written to the cPanel Error Log. Other errors related to cPanel and WHM will be found in this file located at

/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log

cPanel Backup Log Files

cPanel will write any information related to backups to the cpbackup directory. This will only record information about backups which have been generated by the in-built backup system inside WHM. The directory will contain a list of recent backup jobs in the format 1519178402.log, 151987402.log. Each file is a separate backup process. The files are located at