checkId: check.logs.directory.writable plugin: stellaops.doctor.observability severity: fail tags: [observability, logs, quick]

Log Directory Writable

This Stella Ops Doctor diagnostic proves that the platform can actually write its logs to disk. Because lost logs break the platform’s auditability guarantee, it is a fail-severity check intended for pre-flight and routine health runs.

What It Checks

Verifies that the log directory exists and is writable. The check:

• Reads the log path from Logging:Path configuration. Falls back to platform defaults: /var/log/stellaops on Linux, %ProgramData%\StellaOps\logs on Windows.
• Verifies the directory exists.
• Writes a temporary file to test write access, then deletes it.
• Fails if the directory does not exist, is not writable due to permissions, or encounters an I/O error.

Why It Matters

If the log directory is not writable, application logs are silently lost. Without logs, troubleshooting service failures, debugging policy evaluation issues, and performing security incident investigations becomes impossible. This is a severity-fail check because log loss breaks the auditability guarantee.

Common Causes

• Log directory not created during installation
• Directory was deleted
• Configuration points to wrong path
• Insufficient permissions or directory owned by different user
• Read-only file system
• Disk full

How to Fix

Docker Compose

volumes:
  - log-data:/var/log/stellaops

docker exec <platform-container> mkdir -p /var/log/stellaops

Bare Metal / systemd

# Create log directory
sudo mkdir -p /var/log/stellaops

# Set ownership and permissions
sudo chown -R stellaops:stellaops /var/log/stellaops
sudo chmod 755 /var/log/stellaops

Kubernetes / Helm

logging:
  path: "/var/log/stellaops"
  persistence:
    enabled: true
    size: 10Gi

Or use an emptyDir volume for ephemeral log storage with a sidecar shipping logs to an external system.

Verification

stella doctor run --check check.logs.directory.writable

Related Checks

• check.logs.rotation.configured — verifies log rotation is configured
• check.storage.diskspace — verifies sufficient disk space is available