Logmonster - log utility for merging, sorting, and processing web logs

# NAME

Logmonster - log utility for merging, sorting, and processing web logs

# SYNOPSIS

logmonster.pl -i <interval> [-v] [-r] [-n] [-b N]

       Interval is one of:

           hour    (last hour)
           day     (yesterday)
           month   (last month)

       Optional:

          -v     verbose     - lots of status messages
          -n     dry run     - do everything except feed the logs into the processor
          -r     report      - last periods hit counts
          -b N   back N days - use with -i day to process logs older than one day

# USAGE

To see what it will do without actually doing anything

       /usr/local/sbin/logmonster -i day -v -n

From cron:

       5 1 * * * /usr/local/sbin/logmonster -i day

From cron with a report of activity:

       5 1 * * * /usr/local/sbin/logmonster -i day -v

# DESCRIPTION

Logmonster is a tool to collect log files from one or many web servers, split them based on the virtual host they were served for, sort the logs into cronological order, and pipe the sorted logs to a log file analyzer. Webalizer, http-analyze, and AWstats are currently supported.

## MOTIVATION

Log collection: I have several web sites that are mirrored. I only care agreggate statistics. To accomplish that, the logs must be collected from each server.

Sorting: Since most log processors require the log file entries to be in chronological order, simply concatenating them, or feeding them one after another does not work. Logmonster sorts all the log entries for each vhost into chronological order.

Agnostic: If I want to switch to another log processor, it is simple and painless. Each domain can have a preferred processor.

## FEATURES

- Log Retrieval from one or many hosts
- Ouputs to webalizer, http-analyze, and AWstats.
- Automatic vhost detection

  Logmonster generates config files as required (ie, awstats.example.com.conf).

- Efficient

  Reads directly from compressed log files to minimize network and disk usage. Skips sorting if you only have logs from a single host.

- Flexible update intervals

  runs monthly, daily, or hourly

- Reporting

  logs an activity report and sends an email friendly report.

- Reliable

  When something goes wrong, it provides useful error messages.

# INSTALLATION

Step 1 - Download and install (it's FREE!)

  https://www.tnpi.net/cart/index.php?crn=210&rn=385&action=show_detail

  Install like typical perl modules:

         perl Makefile.PL
         make test
         make install

  To install the config file, 'make conf' or 'make newconf'. The newconf target will overwrite any existing config file.

Step 2 - Edit logmonster.conf

       vi /usr/local/etc/logmonster.conf

Step 3 - Edit your web servers config

Apache

  Adjust the CustomLog and ErrorLog definitions. We make two changes, appending %v (the vhost name) to the CustomLog and adding cronolog to automatically rotate the log files.

        LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %v" combined
        CustomLog "| /usr/local/sbin/cronolog /var/log/apache/%Y/%m/%d/access.log" combined
        ErrorLog "| /usr/local/sbin/cronolog /var/log/apache/%Y/%m/%d/error.log"

Lighttpd

       accesslog.format = "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %v"
       accesslog.filename = "|/usr/local/sbin/cronolog /var/log/http/%Y/%m/%d/access.log"
       server.errorlog  = "/var/log/http/error.log"

Step 4 - Test manually, then add to cron.

        crontab -u root -e
        5 1 * * * /usr/local/sbin/logmonster -i day

Step 5 - Read the FAQ

  http://tnpi.net/wiki/Logmonster_FAQ

Step 6 - Enjoy

  Enjoy the daily summary emails.

# DIAGNOSTICS

Run in verbose mode (-v) to see additional status and error messages. Verbosity can be increased by appending another -v, or even (-v -v -v) maximal verbosity. If that is not enough, the source is with you.

Also helpful when troubleshooting is the ability to skip cleanup (so logfiles do not have to be fetched anew) with the --noclean command line option.

# DEPENDENCIES

Not perl builtins

      Compress::Zlib
      Date::Parse (TimeDate)
      Params::Validate

Builtins

      Carp
      Cwd
      FileHandle
      File::Basename
      File::Copy

# BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

Report problems to author. Patches welcome.

# AUTHOR

    Matt Simerson  (msimerson@cpan.org)

# ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

     Gernot Hueber - sumitted the daily userlogs feature
     Lewis Bergman - funded authoring of several features
     Raymond Dijkxhoorn - suggested not sorting the files for one log host
     Earl Ruby  - a better regexp for apache log date parsing

# TODO

Add support for analog.

Add support for individual webalizer.conf file for each domain (this will likely not happen until someone submits a diff. I don't use webalizer any more).

Delete log files older than X days/months - low priority, it's easy and low maintenance to manually delete a few months log files when I'm sure I don't need them any longer.

Do something with error logs (other than just compress)

If files to process are larger than 10MB, find a nicer way to sort them rather than reading them all into a hash. Now I create two hashes, one with data and one with dates. I sort the date hash, and using those sorted hash keys, output the data hash to a sorted file. This is necessary as wusage and http-analyze require logs to be fed in chronological order. Look at awstats logresolvemerge as a possibility.

Add config file setting for the location of awstats.pl

# SEE ALSO

http://tnpi.net/wiki/Logmonster

# LICENCE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2003-2012, The Network People, Inc. (info@tnpi.net) All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Neither the name of the The Network People, Inc. nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DIS CLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.