# Output File is not Being Written

Note: current rsyslog versions have somewhat limited error reporting inside omfile. If a problem persists, you may want to generate a rsyslog debug log, which often can help you pinpoint the actual root cause of the problem more quickly.

To learn more about the current state of error reporting, follow our bug tracker for this issue.

The following subsections list frequent causes for file writing problems. You can quickly check this without the need to create a debug log.

## SELinux

This often stems back to selinux permission errors, especially if files outside of the `/var/log` directory shall be written to.

Follow the SELinux troubleshooting guide to check for this condition.

## Max Number of Open Files

This can also be caused by a too low limit on number of open file handles, especially when dynafiles are being written.

Note that some versions of systemd limit the process to 1024 files by default. The current set limit can be validated by doing:

    cat /proc/<pid>/limits

and the currently open number of files can be obtained by doing:

    ls /proc/<pid>/fd | wc -l

Also make sure the system-wide max open files is appropriate using:

    sysctl fs.file-max

Some versions of systemd completely ignore `/etc/security/limits*`. To change limits for a service in systemd, edit `/usr/lib/systemd/system/rsyslog.service` and under `[Service]` add: `LimitNOFILE=<new value>`.

Then run:

    systemctl daemon-reload
    systemctl restart rsyslog

See also

Help with configuring/using `Rsyslog`:

- Mailing list - best route for general questions

- GitHub: rsyslog source project - detailed questions, reporting issues that are believed to be bugs with `Rsyslog`

- Stack Exchange (View, Ask) - experimental support from rsyslog community

See also

Contributing to `Rsyslog`:

- Source project: rsyslog project README.

- Documentation: rsyslog-doc project README

Copyright 2008-2020 Rainer Gerhards (Großrinderfeld), and Others.