How to log to a file when starting the daemon manually?

[o-alquimista]

If I run the command on the foreground (e.g. ssserver without -d) the log messages show up on my console, as expected.

# ssserver -c /etc/shadowsocks/server.json --user nobody
2025-08-17T12:03:50.610268099-03:00  INFO shadowsocks server 1.23.5 build 2025-07-04T15:20:12.236947224+00:00    
2025-08-17T12:03:50.61202912-03:00  INFO shadowsocks tcp server listening on [::]:19481, inbound address [::]:19481

But if I daemonize it and redirect its output...

ssserver -c /etc/shadowsocks/server.json --user nobody -d > /var/log/shadowsocks.log 2>&1

The log file is created empty and it stays empty.

What am I doing wrong?

[zonyitoo]

-d forked a standalone daemon process, which redirects stdout, stderr to /dev/null.

You may have to use #1993 .