If you’ve ever found an unexpected file named off under /etc/nginx/, here’s the reason why.

When configuring Nginx, it’s possible to disable error logging. However, the directive must be used correctly:

error_log /dev/null;

If you mistakenly write:

error_log off;

Nginx will interpret off as a file path, not as a keyword, and will try to create (or write to) /etc/nginx/off. That’s why you’ll find an empty file named off in your configuration directory.

This behavior happens because Nginx’s configuration parser does not treat off as a special keyword for the error_log directive. Instead, it expects a file path as the first argument, followed optionally by a log level (like warn, error, or debug).

To disable logging properly, just redirect it to /dev/null, which effectively discards all log output:

error_log /dev/null;

This simple change prevents Nginx from creating the mysterious off file.

Have you ever had this problem? I have 😁 That’s why I decided to write a short post about it.