Getting exception in browser with elgg on Ubuntu 16.04

Question

Using Ubuntu 16.04 and PHP 7.0 with webserver located at /home/me/Sites.

Got the message:

exception:title An unrecoverable error has occurred and has been logged...

Apache, PHP, and MySQL all work, based on another web installation. Tried installing by downloading elgg files to my webserver's root. Didn't work. Deleted all elgg files and then tried using composer to install.

No error messages appear in /var/log/apache2/error.log when trying to load the site.

While using composer create-project elgg/starter-project:dev-master, found that php-gd, php-xml, and jquery-imgareaselect were missing. After installing these plug-ins/modules installation appeared successful on Terminal. But still got this exception on the browser.

Changed the .htaccess file so that Apache would direct to the sub-directory of my localhost. Still not working. There is no settings.php file, nor a settings.example.php file. Tried composer install again, which showed no errors. Also no errors show in error.log.

Answer 1

Found php7.0-fpm (FastCGI Process Manager) has no default error_log setting in php.ini.

Line 568 in /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini has this:

;error_log = php_errors.log

Uncomment the error_log line. I added a path (made mine /var/log/apache2/) and restarted Apache. Elgg is now working.