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Reading Logs

Where to find Laravel, queue, and provisioning logs and how to interpret common error patterns.

Last updated 1776211200
  • Clearing the Log File
  • Log Rotation

    • Log File Location

    The primary application log is at:

    storage/logs/laravel.log

    This file captures all application-level events: errors, warnings, queued job failures, email send attempts, and anything your code explicitly logs.

    With the default single channel, all output goes to this one file. For per-day rotation, set LOG_CHANNEL=daily in .env and run php artisan config:clear. Daily logs are created as storage/logs/laravel-YYYY-MM-DD.log.

    Log Levels

    Level Meaning
    DEBUG Verbose development output — usually too noisy in production
    INFO Normal application events (job started, email queued)
    WARNING Non-fatal issue that should be reviewed
    ERROR A specific operation failed, but the app is still running
    CRITICAL Serious failure — application may be in a bad state

    In production, LOG_LEVEL=warning or LOG_LEVEL=error in .env reduces noise while keeping important events visible.

    Reading a Stack Trace

    When an exception is logged, it looks like this:

    [2026-04-15 14:22:10] production.ERROR: Class 'App\Services\RegistrarService' not found
#0 app/Jobs/RegisterDomainJob.php(42): App\Http\Controllers\DomainController->register()
#1 vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/CallQueuedHandler.php(83): ...

    When reading a stack trace:

    1. First line — the exception class and message. This is the actual error.
    2. Lines starting with #0, #1 — the call stack showing how execution reached the error.
    3. Focus on lines containing app/ — those are your application code, not framework internals. Framework lines are rarely where the bug is.

    Common Log Patterns

    SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: Duplicate entry

    SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry 'user@example.com' for key 'clients_email_unique'

    Meaning: You tried to insert a record that violates a unique constraint — typically a duplicate email during client import.

    Fix: Remove the duplicate from your import CSV, or update the existing record instead of inserting.

    Connection refused

    Swift_TransportException: Connection could not be established with host smtp.example.com (stream_socket_client(): Unable to connect to tcp://smtp.example.com:587 (Connection refused))

    Meaning: SMTP server is unreachable — wrong host, wrong port, or SMTP server is down. Also appears for queue worker trying to connect to a stopped service.

    Fix: Verify MAIL_HOST and MAIL_PORT in .env.

    Class not found

    Class 'App\Modules\Registrars\Enom\EnomModule' not found

    Meaning: Composer's autoload map is stale.

    Fix:

    composer dump-autoload

    No application encryption key

    RuntimeException: No application encryption key has been specified.

    Meaning: APP_KEY is missing or empty in .env.

    Fix:

    php artisan key:generate

    Clearing the Log File

    Do not delete laravel.log — the file handle may still be held by PHP-FPM. Truncate instead:

    > storage/logs/laravel.log

    Or on Windows:

    type nul > storage\logs\laravel.log

    Log Rotation

    For production, use daily log rotation:

    1. Set LOG_CHANNEL=daily in .env.
    2. Run php artisan config:clear.
    3. Old daily files accumulate in storage/logs/. Clean up files older than 30 days with a cron job: 
      find /opt/opterius/storage/logs -name "laravel-*.log" -mtime +30 -delete

    [!TIP] When investigating an issue, always check the log timestamp against when the problem was reported. A stack trace from three days ago may be unrelated to what you're diagnosing today.

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