Whats blocking direct access of error_log in apache

Question

I have searched on google for a long time but it seems like nobody has even asked this question: What is blocking the direct access of error_log on Apache servers? Or is it even an Apache thing or this happens to all servers? (by direct accessing i mean something like http://www.myphpsite.com/error_log)

My observation:

• I have checked .htaccess files, doesn't seem to be it.
• I had some log files which didnt have the permission set up properly so users can just go to http://www.myphpsite.com/test.log to view it.
• I created a file with no extension and i can access it directly just fine. (e.g. http://www.myphpsite.com/test)
• I have tried to set the permission to error_log to 777 or 664, still can't access it
• Check through whm for configs, no luck there.
• I did a grep on the entire server looking for the key word error_log but got nothing useful.

So what is stopping the user from accessing error_log file and how do i change the setting?

Answer 1

On a Linux Server the default logging directory for Apache is /var/log/httpd (or /var/log/apache2 depending on your distribution) and the default Document root directory for the web files is /var/www/.

This means if everything is set up per default users shouldn't be able to access your error logs directly via http://url/etcetc quite simply because there's no log file there unless you're copying the log files over to the /var/www/ directory or if you've somehow included /var/log in your Document root directory in the apache configuration files.

Hope this provides an explination.