Access to apache server logs or statistics

Joseph_Sliker

Hi; The site I am concerned with (mine) is hosted on an Apache server run by the IT department in my orgainization. This server is NOT considered very "important" (ie. it is not one of their expensive Oracle servers) and I suspect that the denizens of that realm are really not very knowledgeable about it from a technical standpoint. Thus I find it very hard to get any expert level technical support/questions answered from these folks.

Anywhooo...I am trying to figure out if there is any way to access .log files that would give me historical information about the traffic on various parts of my site. I interact with the parts of the server to which I have access via PuTTy and tools like FTP clients, and phpMyAdmin.

say my site is at http://www2.uglystepchild.com/joespace

Are any of you aware of a tool or set of scripts or something not too complicated that I could place in my site directory (../joespace) that would allow me to tap any server-level statistics, or access logs, or whatever?

bradgrafelman

If you've got access to Apache's access logs (and assuming it's actually configured to create said logs), the first thing that comes to my mind would be something like Webalizer.

Joseph_Sliker

Thanks for the reply, but I am not even clear on if I have access to the logs. Is there a particular (typical) path to which I might be able to navigate in PuTTy in order to see if I have such access? (Out of my depth here).

Thanks.

bradgrafelman

That would depend upon how Apache is configured, such as whether you're using a VirtualHost or not, since virtual host configs can specify alternate log file locations than the "default" site in Apache. And even if there are no vhosts and you are the default site, different package managers on different *nix distros might have things setup their own way, so I can't say what would be a "typical" path.

Maybe a subdirectory in /var/log/ if you're lucky (or not so lucky, if you don't have read access to /var/log/)? Some quick Google searches might turn up pages like this that might be more useful.

sneakyimp

Joseph Sliker;10994956 wrote:
Thanks for the reply, but I am not even clear on if I have access to the logs. Is there a particular (typical) path to which I might be able to navigate in PuTTy in order to see if I have such access? (Out of my depth here).

If you login via puTTY and cd to the directory containing your website files and then type the command 'pwd' then what does it show you? This is usually a pretty good way to determine how your system might be configured. The server in question could be configured to host a single domain in which case it might look like /var/www/html or something. Or it could have plesk installed to manage many domains in which case it might look like /var/www/vhosts/www2.uglystepchild.com/httpdocs. OR it might be a server that doesn't have a complicated management tool installed but which still hosts numerous domains. In that case you might get /var/www/www2/public_html. Or perhaps /home/joseph/public_html or something.

Depending on that configuration, you might surmise additional information as to how apache is configured. If it's using plesk or whm, then you can probably find apache access logs specific to your domain in the directory above your web root (e.g., /var/www/vhosts/www2.uglystepchild.com/logs on a plesk machine).