This solution is explained in detail in the Codeyourinfra project blog post How to check log files in a server without logging in the server. Check it out!

The developers are always requesting you the applications' log files, for troubleshooting purposes. The company's security policies determine that they can't log in the server where the files are. You're tired of sending the files by email to the developers all day long.

Make the log files available through the web browser! check_server_log_files is an example of Ansible role which makes that for you. When executed, the role installs and configures the Apache HTTP Server in a way that log files become accessible through the browser.

In our sample the Jenkins log is exposed, but you can easily do the same for any application, by setting accordingly the variables. You can either replace the default variables defined in the defaults/main.yml file or override them by setting new values in the playbook level, as shown below:

---
- hosts: apps
  roles:
    - role: check_server_log_files
      vars:
        apache_confs:
          - directory: /var/log/app1
            alias: /logs/app1
            conf: app1-logs.conf
          - directory: /var/log/app2
            alias: /logs/app2
            conf: app2-logs.conf

First of all, run the command vagrant up, in order to turn on the jenkins server. After that, execute the command ansible-playbook playbook.yml. Finally, open your web browser and access the Jenkins log files through the URL http://192.168.33.10/logs/jenkins. Alternativelly, download the Jenkins log file through the command wget http://192.168.33.10/logs/jenkins/jenkins.log.

You can also test the solution automaticaly, by executing ./test.sh or using Molecule. With the latter, you can perform the test not only locally (the default), but in AWS as well. During the Codeyourinfra's continuous integration process in Travis CI, the solution is tested in an EC2 instance.

In order to get your environment ready for using Molecule, prepare your Python virtual environment, executing python3 -m venv env && source env/bin/activate && pip install -r requirements.txt. After that, just run the command molecule test, to test the solution locally in a VirtualBox VM managed by Vagrant.

If you prefer performing the test in AWS, bear in mind you must have your credentials appropriately in ~/.aws/credentials. You can configure it through the AWS CLI tool. The test is performed in the AWS region Europe - London (eu-west-2). Just run molecule test -s aws and check the running instance through your AWS Console.