Skip to content

docs: the /logs/ web URL no longer exists — DEPLOYMENT.md is stale #1440

Description

@jonfroehlich

Problem

docs/DEPLOYMENT.md documents a web /logs/ URL as a way to read debug.log, buildlog.txt, and the httpd-*.log files on test and prod. That route is gone. Every documented path returns 404 on both hosts:

/logs/                 -> 404      /logs/httpd-access.log -> 404
/logs/debug.log        -> 404      /logs/debug.log.1      -> 404
/logs/buildlog.txt     -> 404

The 404 response carries Server: gunicorn and Django's custom 404 template, so Apache has no /logs/ alias at all — the request falls through to Django. It is not a permissions or missing-file problem; the route does not exist.

Verified 2026-07-28 by curl against both hosts.

Why it matters

The stale docs send you to a dead end when you are diagnosing a live problem, which is the worst possible time. settings.py also carried the same premise in a comment used to justify the log level.

Fix

  • Rewrite the "Accessing Logs via Web" section and the affected rows of the log-locations table to point at SSH on makelab1/makelab2 (or recycle), which is the path that actually works.
  • Update the CLAUDE.md logging bullet, which repeats the same claim.

Per maintainer: web access to logs is no longer needed, and UW CSE IT is having trouble maintaining support for it — so the fix is to stop documenting it, not to restore it.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions