Understanding Minecraft server log files

Being able to read, understand and troubleshoot issues using the log files that your Minecraft server produces is critical to being a good server owner.

Locating logs
To access your server logs, you need to first connect to the server via FTP. Once connected, download the relevant logs to your computer.

Minecraft 1.6.4 or earlier
All logging is put into a single server.log file on the root directory of the server. You can use our log scanner to download and analyse this file. Please note that this file can become excessively large if your server has been running for a long time, or if a plugin is continuously generating errors. You need to keep on top of the server.log file to make sure that it doesn’t become excessively large.

Minecraft 1.7 or later
Logs are located in the /logs directory. While the server is running, all logging will be put into the latest.log file. You should first check this file; older logs are put into gzip archives to save space. These archived daily and are named with the date they were made. You should check these if there is nothing useful in the latest.log file.

To unarchives a .gz file, you will need to archiver software like 7-Zip (free) or WinRAR (commercial).

Forge servers (FTB, Tekkit, Pixelmon, etc)
Forge servers also two additional log files containing information relating to Forge:

• ForgeModLoader-server-0.log
  
• ForgeModLoader-server-1.log

These are located at the root directory.

Using our log scanner

HostHorde has a unique log scanner tool that can identify common issues found in log files. It currently supports both legacy and new log formats. You should first use this tool when troubleshooting issues:

http://hosthorde.com/log-scanner/

Opening logs

To open the log files, you will need to use a text editor like Notepad++ (free). Notepad++ is able to correctly open the log files that Minecraft produces.

Reading Logs

If you need to read logs manually, for example because nothing relevant is in your latest.log file, downloading them as described above and open them in Notepad++.
Press Ctrl+F to open the find tool, and search for keywords like ERROR or WARN.



You can use Google to search for more information on errors. Most errors you’ll find have been encountered by someone else before, and you’re likely to find relevant threads about them on the Bukkit forums.