What does nginx's $time_local logging variable mean, specifically?
Solution 1:
The $time_local variable contains the time when the log entry is written.
when the HTTP request header is read, nginx does a lookup of the associated virtual server configuration. If the virtual server is found, the request goes through six phases:
- server rewrite phase
- location phase
- location rewrite phase (which can bring the request back to the previous phase)
- access control phase
- try_files phase
- log phase
Since the log phase is the last one, $time_local variable is much more colse to the end of the request than it's start.