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Apache 2.2 Log Files

In order to effectively manage a web server, it is necessary to get feedback about the activity and
performance of the server as well as any problems that may be occurring. The Apache HTTP Server
provides very comprehensive and flexible logging capabilities. This document describes how to
configure its logging capabilities, and how to understand what the logs contain.

Security Warning
Anyone who can write to the directory where Apache is writing a log file can almost certainly gain
access to the uid that the server is started as, which is normally root. Do NOT give people write
access to the directory the logs are stored in without being aware of the consequences; see the
security tips document for details.

In addition, log files may contain information supplied directly by the client, without escaping.
Therefore, it is possible for malicious clients to insert control-characters in the log files, so care must
be taken in dealing with raw logs.

Error Log

Related Modules Related Directives

ErrorLog
LogLevel
The server error log, whose name and location is set by the ErrorLog directive, is the most
important log file. This is the place where Apache httpd will send diagnostic information and record
any errors that it encounters in processing requests. It is the first place to look when a problem
occurs with starting the server or with the operation of the server, since it will often contain details of
what went wrong and how to fix it.

The error log is usually written to a file (typically error_log on Unix systems and error.log on
Windows and OS/2). On Unix systems it is also possible to have the server send errors to syslog
or pipe them to a program.

The format of the error log is relatively free-form and descriptive. But there is certain information that
is contained in most error log entries. For example, here is a typical message.

[Wed Oct 11 14:32:52 2000] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] client denied by

server configuration: /export/home/live/ap/htdocs/test
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The first item in the log entry is the date and time of the message. The second item lists the severity
of the error being reported. The LogLevel directive is used to control the types of errors that are
sent to the error log by restricting the severity level. The third item gives the IP address of the client
that generated the error. Beyond that is the message itself, which in this case indicates that the
server has been configured to deny the client access. The server reports the file-system path (as
opposed to the web path) of the requested document.

A very wide variety of different messages can appear in the error log. Most look similar to the
example above. The error log will also contain debugging output from CGI scripts. Any information
written to stderr by a CGI script will be copied directly to the error log.

It is not possible to customize the error log by adding or removing information. However, error log
entries dealing with particular requests have corresponding entries in the access log. For example,
the above example entry corresponds to an access log entry with status code 403. Since it is
possible to customize the access log, you can obtain more information about error conditions using
that log file.

During testing, it is often useful to continuously monitor the error log for any problems. On Unix
systems, you can accomplish this using:

tail -f error_log

Access Log

Related Modules Related Directives

mod_log_config CustomLog
mod_setenvif LogFormat
SetEnvIf
The server access log records all requests processed by the server. The location and content of the
access log are controlled by the CustomLog directive. The LogFormat directive can be used to
simplify the selection of the contents of the logs. This section describes how to configure the server
to record information in the access log.

Of course, storing the information in the access log is only the start of log management. The next
step is to analyze this information to produce useful statistics. Log analysis in general is beyond the
scope of this document, and not really part of the job of the web server itself. For more information
about this topic, and for applications which perform log analysis, check the Open Directory or Yahoo.

Various versions of Apache httpd have used other modules and directives to control access logging,
including mod_log_referer, mod_log_agent, and the TransferLog directive. The CustomLog
directive now subsumes the functionality of all the older directives.
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The format of the access log is highly configurable. The format is specified using a format string that
looks much like a C-style printf(1) format string. Some examples are presented in the next sections.
For a complete list of the possible contents of the format string, see the mod_log_config format
strings.

Common Log Format

A typical configuration for the access log might look as follows.

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common

CustomLog logs/access_log common

This defines the nickname common and associates it with a particular log format string. The format
string consists of percent directives, each of which tell the server to log a particular piece of
information. Literal characters may also be placed in the format string and will be copied directly into
the log output. The quote character (") must be escaped by placing a backslash before it to prevent
it from being interpreted as the end of the format string. The format string may also contain the
special control characters "\n" for new-line and "\t" for tab.

The CustomLog directive sets up a new log file using the defined nickname. The filename for the
access log is relative to the ServerRoot unless it begins with a slash.

The above configuration will write log entries in a format known as the Common Log Format (CLF).
This standard format can be produced by many different web servers and read by many log analysis
programs. The log file entries produced in CLF will look something like this:

127.0.0.1 - frank [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] "GET /apache_pb.gif

HTTP/1.0" 200 2326

Each part of this log entry is described below.

127.0.0.1 (%h)
This is the IP address of the client (remote host) which made the request to the
server. If HostnameLookups is set to On, then the server will try to determine the
hostname and log it in place of the IP address. However, this configuration is not
recommended since it can significantly slow the server. Instead, it is best to use a
log post-processor such as logresolve to determine the hostnames. The IP
address reported here is not necessarily the address of the machine at which the
user is sitting. If a proxy server exists between the user and the server, this
address will be the address of the proxy, rather than the originating machine.
- (%l)
The "hyphen" in the output indicates that the requested piece of information is not
available. In this case, the information that is not available is the RFC 1413 identity
of the client determined by identd on the clients machine. This information is
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highly unreliable and should almost never be used except on tightly controlled
internal networks. Apache httpd will not even attempt to determine this information
unless IdentityCheck is set to On.

frank (%u)
This is the userid of the person requesting the document as determined by HTTP
authentication. The same value is typically provided to CGI scripts in the
REMOTE_USER environment variable. If the status code for the request (see below)
is 401, then this value should not be trusted because the user is not yet
authenticated. If the document is not password protected, this part will be "-" just
like the previous one.
[10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] (%t)
The time that the request was received. The format is:

[day/month/year:hour:minute:second zone]
day = 2*digit
month = 3*letter
year = 4*digit
hour = 2*digit
minute = 2*digit
second = 2*digit
zone = (`+' | `-') 4*digit

It is possible to have the time displayed in another format by specifying %

{format}t in the log format string, where format is as in strftime(3) from
the C standard library.
"GET /apache_pb.gif HTTP/1.0" (\"%r\")
The request line from the client is given in double quotes. The request line contains
a great deal of useful information. First, the method used by the client is GET.
Second, the client requested the resource /apache_pb.gif, and third, the client
used the protocol HTTP/1.0. It is also possible to log one or more parts of the
request line independently. For example, the format string "%m %U%q %H" will log
the method, path, query-string, and protocol, resulting in exactly the same output
as "%r".

200 (%>s)
This is the status code that the server sends back to the client. This information is
very valuable, because it reveals whether the request resulted in a successful
response (codes beginning in 2), a redirection (codes beginning in 3), an error
caused by the client (codes beginning in 4), or an error in the server (codes
beginning in 5). The full list of possible status codes can be found in the HTTP
specification (RFC2616 section 10).
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2326 (%b)
The last part indicates the size of the object returned to the client, not including the
response headers. If no content was returned to the client, this value will be "-". To
log "0" for no content, use %B instead.

Combined Log Format

Another commonly used format string is called the Combined Log Format. It can be used as follows.

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\""

combined
CustomLog log/access_log combined

This format is exactly the same as the Common Log Format, with the addition of two more fields.
Each of the additional fields uses the percent-directive %{header}i, where header can be any
HTTP request header. The access log under this format will look like:

127.0.0.1 - frank [10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700] "GET /apache_pb.gif

HTTP/1.0" 200 2326 "http://www.example.com/start.html" "Mozilla/4.08 [en]
(Win98; I ;Nav)"

The additional fields are:

"http://www.example.com/start.html" (\"%{Referer}i\")
The "Referer" (sic) HTTP request header. This gives the site that the client reports
having been referred from. (This should be the page that links to or includes
/apache_pb.gif).

"Mozilla/4.08 [en] (Win98; I ;Nav)" (\"%{User-agent}i\")

The User-Agent HTTP request header. This is the identifying information that the
client browser reports about itself.

Multiple Access Logs

Multiple access logs can be created simply by specifying multiple CustomLog directives in the
configuration file. For example, the following directives will create three access logs. The first
contains the basic CLF information, while the second and third contain referer and browser
information. The last two CustomLog lines show how to mimic the effects of the ReferLog and
AgentLog directives.

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common

CustomLog logs/access_log common
CustomLog logs/referer_log "%{Referer}i -> %U"
CustomLog logs/agent_log "%{User-agent}i"

This example also shows that it is not necessary to define a nickname with the LogFormat
directive. Instead, the log format can be specified directly in the CustomLog directive.
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Conditional Logs
There are times when it is convenient to exclude certain entries from the access logs based on
characteristics of the client request. This is easily accomplished with the help of environment
variables. First, an environment variable must be set to indicate that the request meets certain
conditions. This is usually accomplished with SetEnvIf. Then the env= clause of the CustomLog
directive is used to include or exclude requests where the environment variable is set. Some
examples:

# Mark requests from the loop-back interface

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "127\.0\.0\.1" dontlog
# Mark requests for the robots.txt file
SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/robots\.txt$" dontlog
# Log what remains
CustomLog logs/access_log common env=!dontlog

As another example, consider logging requests from english-speakers to one log file, and non-
english speakers to a different log file.

SetEnvIf Accept-Language "en" english

CustomLog logs/english_log common env=english
CustomLog logs/non_english_log common env=!english

Although we have just shown that conditional logging is very powerful and flexible, it is not the only
way to control the contents of the logs. Log files are more useful when they contain a complete
record of server activity. It is often easier to simply post-process the log files to remove requests that
you do not want to consider.

Log Rotation
On even a moderately busy server, the quantity of information stored in the log files is very large.
The access log file typically grows 1 MB or more per 10,000 requests. It will consequently be
necessary to periodically rotate the log files by moving or deleting the existing logs. This cannot be
done while the server is running, because Apache will continue writing to the old log file as long as it
holds the file open. Instead, the server must be restarted after the log files are moved or deleted so
that it will open new log files.

By using a graceful restart, the server can be instructed to open new log files without losing any
existing or pending connections from clients. However, in order to accomplish this, the server must
continue to write to the old log files while it finishes serving old requests. It is therefore necessary to
wait for some time after the restart before doing any processing on the log files. A typical scenario
that simply rotates the logs and compresses the old logs to save space is:

mv access_log access_log.old
mv error_log error_log.old
apachectl graceful
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sleep 600
gzip access_log.old error_log.old

Another way to perform log rotation is using piped logs as discussed in the next section.

Piped Logs
Apache httpd is capable of writing error and access log files through a pipe to another process,
rather than directly to a file. This capability dramatically increases the flexibility of logging, without
adding code to the main server. In order to write logs to a pipe, simply replace the filename with the
pipe character "|", followed by the name of the executable which should accept log entries on its
standard input. Apache will start the piped-log process when the server starts, and will restart it if it
crashes while the server is running. (This last feature is why we can refer to this technique as
"reliable piped logging".)

Piped log processes are spawned by the parent Apache httpd process, and inherit the userid of that
process. This means that piped log programs usually run as root. It is therefore very important to
keep the programs simple and secure.

One important use of piped logs is to allow log rotation without having to restart the server. The
Apache HTTP Server includes a simple program called rotatelogs for this purpose. For example,
to rotate the logs every 24 hours, you can use:

CustomLog "|/usr/local/apache/bin/rotatelogs /var/log/access_log 86400"

common

Notice that quotes are used to enclose the entire command that will be called for the pipe. Although
these examples are for the access log, the same technique can be used for the error log.

As with conditional logging, piped logs are a very powerful tool, but they should not be used where a
simpler solution like off-line post-processing is available.

By default the piped log process is spawned using a shell. (usually with /bin/sh -c). Depending
on the shell specifics invocation via shell might lead to an additional shell process for the lifetime of
the logging pipe program and signal handling problems during restart.

Use "||" instead of "|" to spawn without invoking a shell:

# Invoke "rotatelogs" without using a shell

CustomLog "||/usr/local/apache/bin/rotatelogs /var/log/access_log 86400"
common

Windows note

Note that on Windows, you may run into problems when running many piped logger processes,
especially when HTTPD is running as a service. This is caused by running out of desktop heap
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space. The desktop heap space given to each service is specified by the third argument to the
SharedSection parameter in the
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\SubSystems\Windo
ws registry value. Change this value with care; the normal caveats for changing the Windows
registry apply, but you might also exhaust the desktop heap pool if the number is adjusted too high.

Virtual Hosts
When running a server with many virtual hosts, there are several options for dealing with log files.
First, it is possible to use logs exactly as in a single-host server. Simply by placing the logging
directives outside the <VirtualHost> sections in the main server context, it is possible to log all
requests in the same access log and error log. This technique does not allow for easy collection of
statistics on individual virtual hosts.

If CustomLog or ErrorLog directives are placed inside a <VirtualHost> section, all requests or
errors for that virtual host will be logged only to the specified file. Any virtual host which does not
have logging directives will still have its requests sent to the main server logs. This technique is very
useful for a small number of virtual hosts, but if the number of hosts is very large, it can be
complicated to manage. In addition, it can often create problems with insufficient file descriptors.

For the access log, there is a very good compromise. By adding information on the virtual host to the
log format string, it is possible to log all hosts to the same log, and later split the log into individual
files. For example, consider the following directives.

LogFormat "%v %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" comonvhost

CustomLog logs/access_log comonvhost

The %v is used to log the name of the virtual host that is serving the request. Then a program like
split-logfile can be used to post-process the access log in order to split it into one file per virtual host.

Other Log Files

Related Modules Related Directives

mod_logio LogFormat
mod_log_forensic BufferedLogs
mod_cgi ForensicLog
mod_rewrite PidFile
mod_log_config RewriteLog
RewriteLogLevel
ScriptLog
ScriptLogBuffer
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ScriptLogLength

Logging actual bytes sent and received

mod_logio adds in two additional LogFormat fields (%I and %O) that log the actual number of
bytes received and sent on the network.

Forensic Logging
mod_log_forensic provides for forensic logging of client requests. Logging is done before and
after processing a request, so the forensic log contains two log lines for each request. The forensic
logger is very strict with no customizations. It can be an invaluable debugging and security tool.

PID File
On startup, Apache httpd saves the process id of the parent httpd process to the file
logs/httpd.pid. This filename can be changed with the PidFile directive. The process-id is for
use by the administrator in restarting and terminating the daemon by sending signals to the parent
process; on Windows, use the -k command line option instead. For more information see the
Stopping and Restarting page.

Script Log
In order to aid in debugging, the ScriptLog directive allows you to record the input to and output
from CGI scripts. This should only be used in testing - not for live servers. More information is
available in the mod_cgi documentation.

Rewrite Log
When using the powerful and complex features of mod_rewrite, it is almost always necessary to use
the RewriteLog to help in debugging. This log file produces a detailed analysis of how the rewriting
engine transforms requests. The level of detail is controlled by the RewriteLogLevel directive.

Available Languages: en | fr | ja | ko | tr

Comments
Notice:
This is not a Q&A section. Comments placed here should be pointed towards suggestions on
improving the documentation or server, and may be removed again by our moderators if they are
either implemented or considered invalid/off-topic. Questions on how to manage the Apache HTTP
Server should be directed at either our IRC channel, #httpd, on Freenode, or sent to our mailing lists.

RSS Log in / register

CHOPPERGIRL 561 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)
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No feature or mention is made how to pipe Access Log hits to the currently open console, to see them in
real time. My best kludge guess is this (turned on and off via mesg y/n) however it writes to all open
consoles, and I can not test it because my linux distro (microcore) does not support the wall command:
CustomLog "||wall" common If there is a better way to do this.... CHOPPERGIRL http://choppergirl.air-
war.org

cmacgreg 560 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

Hi Choppergirl, Just output to a normal log file, and "tail -f" it like so; there's no need to do anything weird
in the Apache config: # tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log ... and watch. Works for any log files, not just
Apache. -craig

CHOPPERGIRL 553 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

I don't want to do it that way, because its running off a USB harddrive (microcore linux) and it would beat
my USB drive to deal. I don't want any disk writes at all or expanding log files, I just want to redirect the
access log to the bloody console.... I don't know why this is so hard, because Apache direct every other
error message on start up to the console...

CHOPPERGIRL 553 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

Can somebody please update this documentation with an example of how to direct apache error and
output (access) messages to the console (like every other program in existence) instead of a disk file.
Thanks.

covener 553 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

It's not mentioned because it's not a feature. You can do whatever you like with the output in the impl of a
piped logger.

kestrel 516 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

how about just piping it to echo?

tfrumbacher 497 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

ErrorLog /dev/console Works like a champ.

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Toby Goodwin 875 days ago Rating: 0 (register an account in order to rate comments)

"Any information written to stderr by a CGI script will be copied directly to the error log." If you use
ErrorLog within a <VirtualHost>, CGI output *used* to go there (e.g. apache-2.2.3). But now it doesn't, it
goes to the main ErrorLog (e.g. apache-2.2.16), although apache's own error messages do respect the
VirtualHost ErrorLog. This page needs to be updated to explain the current reality. Can I also request that
it explains how to restore the earlier behaviour, if that is even possible now?