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CSG FAQ

Q: Are the logs for the department web and cgi servers available?

The following logs are available for the CS Department web server (www.cs.indiana.edu):

  • Access Log - The access log records all web hits to the server and is accessible in the file /l/apache/logs/access_log. This log file is rotated daily and the logs for previous days are accessible in the directory /l/apache/logs/access_logs. In this directory, you will find subdirectories for each year and month.

    Note that these logs are not rotated at midnight so each log file, while covering a 24 hour period, will span portions of two calendar days. For example, the log file for Tuesday will go from from 7pm Monday to 7pm Tuesday.

  • Error Logs - The error logs records all errors encountered by the server, which may include things like errors in cgi scripts, hits to non-existent web pages, and page accesses denied due to insufficient permissions. The error log for the current day is available in the file /l/apache/logs/error_log and the archive of error logs for previous days can be found in the directory /l/apache/logs/error_logs.

  • Referer Logs - The referer log is a record of the page that referred the browser to the local page. These records are of the form "URL1 -> URL2" and generally mean that the web page at URL1 included a link to the page at URL2. The referer log for the current day is available in the file /l/apache/logs/referer_log and the archive of referer logs for previous days can be found in the directory /l/apache/logs/referer_logs.

  • Agent Logs - The agent log is a record of the browser that issued each request. This is simply a listing of the browser name for each hit with no reference to the actual page being accessed. This log is of little use other than generating statistics about which browsers are hitting the site. The agent log for the current day is available in the file /l/apache/logs/agent_log and the archive of agent logs for previous days can be found in the directory /l/apache/logs/agent_logs.

The same logs are also available for the CS Department CGI server (cgi.cs.indiana.edu) in the directory /l/cgi/apache/logs but you will have to ssh to cgi.cs.indiana.edu in order to see them. Note that the vast majority of the hits to the CGI server are proxied through www.cs.indiana.edu/cgi-pub, so the access_log will usually list grouchy.cs.indiana.edu (aka. www.cs.indiana.edu) as the host making the request. You will have to go to the logs for www.cs.indiana.edu in /l/apache/logs to see where the request actually originated.




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