Give the PHP layer somewhere to record what it swallowed

Plugin/unraid/include/config.php

@@ -160,6 +160,56 @@ define('LOG_DIR',     '/var/log/varaverk');
 define('CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_DIR', $_vv_cfg['CUSTOM_SCRIPTS_DIR'] ?? '/boot/config/plugins/user.scripts/Varaverk/Scripts');
 unset($_vv_cfg);
 
+// ── Recording a failure this layer chose to survive ───────────────────────────────────────────
+// The bash half writes a log for every run. The PHP half had nowhere to write at all — no
+// error_log() call in 107 files — so an endpoint that caught an exception and carried on left no
+// trace anywhere. Five directory walks do exactly that, and an unreadable directory renders as a
+// legitimately empty result: the scheduler's script library shows "no scripts" whether you have
+// none or the tree could not be read.
+//
+// This is the smallest thing that fixes it. It does not change any response contract; it records
+// what was swallowed so the operator can find out why a page went empty.
+//
+// It lives in config.php because that is the one file every layer reaches — api/, include/ and
+// pages/ all load it, several of them without ever loading common.php.
+define('VV_PHP_LOG',     LOG_DIR . '/php.log');
+define('VV_PHP_LOG_MAX', 262144);   // 256KB. /var/log is tmpfs on Unraid — this is RAM, so a
+                                    // repeating fault must not be able to grow without bound.
+
+/**
+ * Record a failure that was caught and survived. Never throws, never echoes, never affects the
+ * response — a logger that can break a request is worse than no logger.
+ */
+function vv_log_error(string $where, string $message): void {
+    try {
+        if (!is_dir(LOG_DIR)) return;
+        // Timestamps are local, matching every bash log — see "The clock this layer runs on".
+        $line = date('Y-m-d H:i:s') . '  ' . $where . '  '
+              . preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', trim($message)) . "\n";
+
+        $size = @filesize(VV_PHP_LOG);
+        if ($size !== false && $size > VV_PHP_LOG_MAX) {
+            // Drop the older half rather than the whole file, so a fault that repeats every poll
+            // still leaves recent context instead of a log that empties itself at random.
+            $keep = @file_get_contents(VV_PHP_LOG, false, null, (int)(VV_PHP_LOG_MAX / 2));
+            if ($keep !== false) {
+                // Resume on a line boundary — slicing at a byte offset lands mid-line, and a
+                // half-written first entry is worse than one fewer entry.
+                $nl   = strpos($keep, "\n");
+                $keep = $nl === false ? '' : substr($keep, $nl + 1);
+                @file_put_contents(VV_PHP_LOG, $keep, LOCK_EX);
+            }
+        }
+        $isNew = !file_exists(VV_PHP_LOG);
+        @file_put_contents(VV_PHP_LOG, $line, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);
+        // Do not inherit the ambient umask. php-fpm's is loose enough to create this 0666, and a
+        // world-writable file under /var/log is the kind of small thing that is never noticed.
+        if ($isNew) @chmod(VV_PHP_LOG, 0644);
+    } catch (Throwable $_) {
+        return;   // Deliberately silent: this is the last place an error should propagate from.
+    }
+}
+
 define('VV_SETUP_STATE_FILE', STATE_DIR . '/varaverk_setup.db');
 
 // ── The two install layouts ───────────────────────────────────────────────────