Where can I find application runtime errors using Nginx, Starman, Plack and Catalyst?

Question

I have managed successfully to server my Catalyst app on my development machine using Plack + Starman, using a daemon script I based on one I found in Dave Rolsky's Silki distribution.

I then set up nginx to reverse proxy to my Starman server, and aliased the static directory for nginx to serve. So far, so good. However, I am at a loss as to where my application STDERR is supposed to be logging to. It isn't reaching nginx (I suppose that makes sense) but I can't find much documentation as to where Starman may be logging it - if anywhere. I did have a look at Plack's Middleware modules but only saw options for access logs.

Can someone help me?

Answer 1

It's going nowhere. Catalyst::Log is sending data to STDERR, and the init script is sending STDERR to /dev/null.

You have a few basic choices:

1. Replace Catalyst::Log with something like Catalyst::Log::Log4perl or simply a subclass of Catalyst::Log with overridden _send_to_log -- either one will allow you to send the logging output somewhere other than STDERR.

2. Write some code that runs at the PSGI level to manage a logfile and reopen STDERR to it. I tried this, it wasn't very pleasant. Logfiles are harder than they look.

3. Use FastCGI instead, and you'll have an error stream that sends the log output back to the webserver. You can still use Plack via Plack::Handler::FCGI / Plack::Handler::FCGI::Engine (I'd recommend the latter, because the FCGI::Engine code is much newer and nicer than FCGI.pm).