How to Enable System and Exception Logging in Magento 1.6

Updated on August 16, 2021 by Carrie Smaha

0 Minutes, 45 Seconds to Read

Magento 1.6 has a powerful logging system that can be extremely helpful when debugging any issues you may have. If there’s an error there is almost always an entry in the system or exceptions log. By default though, logging is not enabled. Enabling the logs in Magento 1.6 is relatively easy and is accomplished through the Magento Admin Backend.

Enabling System and Exception Logging

Log into your Magento Admin Backend
Go to System ->> Configuration

Click on “Developer” in the left side menu pane
Open the “Log Settings” section
Change the “Enabled” to “Yes“

Click “Save Config“

Now, any system events that are logged will be to a system.log file located in the /var/log folder. Any exceptions that are to be logged will be in a file called exception.log in the /var/log folder as well.

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Carrie Smaha Senior Manager Marketing Operations

Carrie enjoys working on demand generation and product marketing projects that tap into multi-touch campaign design, technical SEO, content marketing, software design, and business operations.

6 thoughts on “How to Enable System and Exception Logging in Magento 1.6”

Joshua says:

January 14, 2016 at 6:16 pm

How would one go about turning on this feature from command line vs Magento backend?
1. InMotionFan says:
  
  January 15, 2016 at 6:44 pm
  
  Hello Joshua,
  
  Thank you for contacting us. I spent some time looking into this, and while you can find the log files, it must still be enabled in the dashboard.
  
  Thank you,
  John-Paul
sdfor says:

July 1, 2014 at 9:56 pm

How do you view the log if you don’t have ssh access
1. InMotionFan says:
  
  July 1, 2014 at 11:33 pm
  
  Hello sdfor,
  
  If you don’t have SSH access to the server you can connect with either FTP or by using the cPanel File Manager.
  
  The Magento exception log should be stored in the /magento/var/log/ directory relative to your Magento installation, and not the server’s main /var/log/ directory.
  
  – Jacob

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