How can I view my log files via ssh?
If you have drush set up, you can use drush watchdog-list to look at the items logged to watchdog. 

If you don't have access to drush, but your DB is up and running fine, you can always query the watchdog table with Select * from watchdog;

From personal experience, you might want to check your apache error logs as well to see if those hold anything that can help.