Follow these steps to use nano to view an error log or any other file on a Linux or FreeBSD system.
1. Login via SSH.
2. After you successfully login. You have to navigate to the proper directory where the files that you want to view are located. You can us the command cd to change directories. For example, to change directories to the location: /var/log you execute the following command: cd /var/log
You would be taken to /var/log from where you were.
3. Now you can list all the files located within whatever directory you are in. To do this just execute this command: ls -la
This command will show you all the files located within the directory you are in.
4. Now use nano to open and view whatever file you want to view. To do this execute it: nano /var/log/error
The above command will use nano to open a file called error located in the /var/log directory.