# Error Log - 403 access logs

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/error-log-403-access-logs/244058>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [February 12, 2016, 11:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/error-log-403-access-logs/244058 "2016-02-12T23:33:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Sadaf\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/858c86/32.png) [@Sadaf\_N](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Sadaf_N)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2016, 11:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/error-log-403-access-logs/244058/1 "2016-02-12T23:33:04Z")

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We use our nginx error logs to monitor our system closely. Recently,  
we’ve  
been hit with a lot of requests with malicious intent, and thus have  
blocked  
their IPs using a "deny " directive. This has worked as expected, but  
unfortunately, our error logs are still flooded with “error” with  
“access  
forbidden by rule…” messages.

Why is a successful denial being logged as an error? I would expect  
that  
this is correct behaviour, and thus should not be logged as an error.

In any event, is their any way to suppress 403 denied messages from the  
error log without bumping up the logging level? We don’t want to change  
the  
log level, as the “upstream timed out” error is also at level “error”  
and is  
something we really want to keep an eye on.

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[Error Log - 403 access logs](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,264501,264501#msg-264501)**
>
> We use our nginx error logs to monitor our system closely. Recently, we've been hit with a lot of requests with malicious intent, and thus have blocked their IPs using a "deny " directive. This has worked as expected, but unfortunately, our...