wwwstat(1) wwwstat(1)
03 November 1996
NAME
wwwstat - summarize WWW server (httpd) access statistics
SYNOPSIS
wwwstat [-F system_config] [-f user_config] [options...] [--] [ summary
| logfile | + | - ]...
DESCRIPTION
wwwstat reads a sequence of httpd common logfile format (CLF)
access_log files and/or prior wwwstat output summary files and/or the
standard input and outputs a summary of the access statistics in HTML.
Since wwwstat does not make any changes to the input files or write
any files in the server directories, it can be run by any user with
read access to the input logfile(s) and summary file(s). This allows
people other than the webmaster to run specialized analyses of just
the things they are interested in summarizing. wwwstat provides World
Wide Web (WWW) access statistics, which does not necessarily
correspond to statistics on individual users. It counts the number of
HTTP requests received by the server and the amount of bytes
transmitted in response to those requests, according to what is in the
logfile(s), and outputs those counts as tables broken down by category
of request. wwwstat output summaries can be read by gwstat to produce
fancy graphs of the summarized statistics. The splitlog program can be
used to split a large logfile into separate files by entry prefix or
URL path. wwwstat is a perl script, which means you need to have a
perl interpreter to run the program. It has been tested with perl
versions 4.036 and 5.002.
Output Sections
wwwstat's output consists of a set of cross-reference links, the sum
totals and averages for the processed data, and a sequence of amount-
by-category tables partitioned into sections. The section categories
are based on the characteristics evident from the access request, as
provided by the common logfile format (see NOTES). These include:
Request Date e.g., "Feb 2 1996"
Request Hour e.g., "00" through "23"
Client Domain The Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) suffix that
corresponds to an organization type or country
name.
Reversed Subdomain The FQDN, usually minus the first (machine name)
component, and reversed so that it is easier to
read when sorted.
URL/Archive Grouping based on Request-URI or non-success
status code.
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Identity The user identity based on IdentityCheck token or
Authorization field. Each section can be
enabled/disabled using the configuration files or
command-line options (see Section Display
Options).
Output Table Format
Inside each section, the statistics are presented as a preformatted
table. %Reqs %Byte Bytes Sent Requests category-type
----- ----- ------------ -------- |---------------
NN.NN NN.NN NNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN | category-value
100.0 100.0 NNNNNNNNNNNN NNNNNNNN | category-value
Requests Requests received for this category-value.
Bytes Sent Bytes transmitted for this category-value.
%Reqs (<Requests>/<Total Requests>)*100.
%Byte (<Bytes Sent>/<Total Bytes>)*100. The table can be sorted
by category-value (-sort key), number of requests received
(-sort req), or number of bytes received (-sort byte). It
can also be limited to the -top N entries.
OPTIONS
Configuration Options
These options define how wwwstat should establish defaults and
interpret the command-line.
-F filename
Get system configuration defaults from the given file. If used,
this must be the first argument on the command-line, since it
needs to be interpreted before the other command options. The
file wwwstat.rc is included with the distribution as an example
of this file; it contains perl source code which directly sets
the control and display options provided by wwwstat. If filename
is not a pathname, the include path (see FILES) is searched for
filename. An empty string as filename will disable this feature.
[-F "wwwstat.rc"]
-f filename
Get user configuration defaults from the given file. If used,
this must be the first argument on the command-line after -F (if
any). The file is the same format as for the -F option (see
wwwstat.rc). If filename is not a pathname, the include path
(see FILES) is searched for filename. An empty string as
filename will disable this feature. [-f ".wwwstatrc"]
-- Last option (the remaining arguments are treated as input files).
Diagnostic Options
These options provide information about wwwstat usage or about some
unusual aspects of the logfile(s) being processed.
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-h Help - display usage information to STDERR and then exit.
-v Verbose display to STDERR of each log entry processed.
-x Display to STDERR all requests resulting in HTTP error responses.
-e Display to STDERR all invalid log entries. Invalid log entries
can occur if the server is miswriting or overwriting its own log,
if the request is made by a broken client or proxy, or if a
malicious attacker is trying to gain privileged access to your
system. For the latter reason, the webmaster should run wwwstat
with this option on a regular basis.
Display Options
These options modify the output format.
-H string
Use the given string as the HTML title and heading for output.
-X string
Use the given string as the cross-reference URL to the last
summary output. Any occurrence of the characters "%M" or "%Y"
are replaced by the month and year, respectively, of the month
prior to the first log entry date. The empty string will exclude
any cross-reference.
-R Display the daily stats table sorted in reverse. This option is
primarily for use with the gwstat program for producing graphs of
the output. -l
-L Do (-l) or don't (-L) display the full DNS hostname of clients in
your local domain (which is determined by the configured value of
$AppendToLocalhost) in the section on subdomain statistics. The
default [-L] is to strip the machine name from local addresses.
-o
-O Do (-o) or don't (-O) display the full DNS hostname of clients
outside your local domain in the section on subdomain statistics.
The default [-O] is to strip the machine name from outside
addresses. -u
-U Do (-u) or don't (-U) display the IP address of clients with
unresolved domain names in the section on subdomain statistics.
The -dns option can be used to resolve some names, but not all IP
hosts have a DNS name (SLIP/PPP connections) and sometimes a
host's DNS service is inaccessible. The default [-U] is to group
all such addresses under the category "Unresolved". -dns
-nodns
Do (-dns) or don't (-nodns) use the system's hostname lookup
facilities to find the DNS hostname associated with any
unresolved IP addresses. Looking up a DNS name may be very slow,
particularly when the results are negative (no DNS name), which
is why a caching capability is included as well. [-nodns]
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-cache filename
Use the given DBM database as the read/write persistent DNS cache
(the .dir and .pag extensions are appended automatically). Cached
entries (including negative results) are removed after the time
configured for $DNSexpires [two months]. No caching is performed
if filename is the empty string, which may be needed if your
system does not support DBM or NDBM functionality. Running -dns
without a persistent cache is not recommended. [-cache
"dnscache"]
-trunc N
Truncate the URLs listed in the archive section after the Nth
hierarchy level. This option is commonly used to reduce the
output size and memory requirements of wwwstat by grouping the
requests by directory tree instead of listing every URL. The
default [-trunc 0] is to display every requested URL. -files
-nofiles
Do (-files) or don't (-nofiles) include the last component of a
URL (usually the filename) in the archive section. This option is
commonly used to reduce the output size and memory requirements
of wwwstat by grouping the requests by directory instead of
listing every URL. The default [-files] is to display the entire
requested URL. -link
-nolink
Do (-link) or don't (-nolink) add a hypertext link around each
archive URL. This option is useful for local maintenance, but it
is not recommended for publication of the HTML results (it often
results in links to temporary or nonexistant resources, and leads
people/robots to resources that might not be publically
available). [-nolink] -cgi
-nocgi
Do (-cgi) or don't (-nocgi) prefix the summary output with CGI
header fields appropriate for use with the HTTP common gateway
interface. Using wwwstat as a CGI script is not recommended - it
is usually better to simply run the wwwstat program periodically
and serve the static output file. [-nocgi]
Section Display Options
These options change the display of entire sections (as opposed to the
entries within those sections). They allow the user to enable or
disable an entire section, set the sorting method for that section,
and limit the number of displayed entries for that section. These
options are context-sensitive and processed in the order given. -all
-noall
Include (-all) or exclude (-noall) all of the display sections.
The -noall option is commonly used just prior to one or more of
the other section options, such that only the listed sections are
displayed. -daily
-nodaily
Include (-daily) or exclude (-nodaily) the section of statistics
by request date and set the scope for later -sort and -top
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options to this section. -hourly
-nohourly
Include (-hourly) or exclude (-nohourly) the section of
statistics by request hour and set the scope for later -sort and
-top options to this section. -domain
-nodomain
Include (-domain) or exclude (-nodomain) the section of
statistics by the client's Internet domain and set the scope for
later -sort and -top options to this section. -subdomain
-nosubdomain
Include (-subdomain) or exclude (-nosubdomain) the section of
statistics by the client's Internet subdomain (reversed for
display) and set the scope for later -sort and -top options to
this section. -archive
-noarchive
Include (-archive) or exclude (-noarchive) the section of
statistics by requested URL/archive and set the scope for later
-sort and -top options to this section. -r -ident
-noident
Include (-r or -ident) or exclude (-noident) the section of
statistics by the identity of the user (if IdentityCheck is ON)
or the authentication userid (if supplied) and set the scope for
later -sort and -top options to this section. DO NOT PUBLISH
this information, as that would reveal security-related
identities and be a violation of privacy. This option is
provided for administrative purposes only.
-sort (key|byte|req)
Sort this section by its primary key, the number of bytes
transmitted, or the number of requests received. [-sort key]
-top N
Display only the top N entries for this section. This option
assumes that the -sort option has been set to either bytes or
requests.
-both
Display both the top N entries for this section [10, sorted by
requests], and then the full section (all entries) sorted by key.
Search Options
These options are used to limit the analysis to requests matching a
pattern. The pattern is supplied in the form of a perl regular
expression, except that the characters "+" and "." are escaped
automatically unless the -noescape option is given. Enclose the
pattern in single-quotes to prevent the command shell from
interpreting some special characters. Multiple occurrences of the
same option results in an OR-ing of the regular expressions. Search
options are only applied to logfile entries; any summary files input
must have been created with the same search options. -a regexp
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-A regexp
Include (-a) or exclude (-A) all requests containing a
hostname/IP address matching the given perl regular expression.
-c regexp
-C regexp
Include (-c) or exclude (-C) all requests resulting in an HTTP
status code matching the given perl regular expression. -d
regexp
-D regexp
Include (-d) or exclude (-D) all requests occurring on a date
(e.g., "Feb 2 1994") matching the given perl regular expression.
-t regexp
-T regexp
Include (-t) or exclude (-T) all requests occurring during the
hour (e.g., "23" is 11pm - 12pm) matching the given perl regular
expression. -m regexp
-M regexp
Include (-m) or exclude (-M) all requests using an HTTP method
(e.g., "HEAD") matching the given perl regular expression. -n
regexp
-N regexp
Include (-n) or exclude (-N) all requests on a URL (archive name)
matching the given perl regular expression.
-noescape
Do not escape the special characters ("+" and ".") in the
remaining search options.
INPUT
After parsing the options, the remaining arguments on the command-line
are treated as input arguments and are read in the order given. If no
input arguments are given, the configured default logfile is read [+].
- Read from standard input (STDIN).
+ Read the default logfile. [as configured]
filename...
Read the given file and determine from the first line whether it
is a previous output summary or a CLF logfile. If the filename's
extension indicates that is is compressed (gz|z|Z), then pipe it
through the configured decompression program [gunzip -c] first.
Summary files must have been created with the same (or similar)
configuration and command-line options as the currently running
program; if not, weird things will happen.
USAGE
wwwstat is used for many purposes:
o as a diagnostic utility for measuring server activity, finding
incorrect URL references, and detecting attempted misuse of the
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server;
o as a public relations tool for measuring technology or
information transfer (i.e., Is the message getting out? To the
right people?);
o as an archival tool for tracking web usage over time without
storing the entire logfile; and,
o most often, as an easy mechanism for justifying all the hard work
that went into creating the web content that people out there are
requesting. In most cases, wwwstat is run on a periodic basis
(nightly, weekly, and/or monthly) by a wrapper program as a
crontab entry shortly after midnight, typically in conjunction
with rotating the current logfile. The output is usually
directed to a temporary file which can later be moved to a
published location. The temporary file is necessary to avoid
erasing your published file during wwwstat's processing (which
would look very odd if someone tried to GET it from your web).
wwwstat can be run as a CGI script (-cgi), but that is not
recommended unless the input logfile is very small. All of the
command-line options, and a few options that are not available
from the command-line, can be changed within the user and system
configuration files (see wwwstat.rc). These files are actually
perl library modules which are executed as part of the program's
initialization. The example provided with the distribution
includes complete documentation on what variables can be set and
their range of values.
Perl Regular Expressions
The Search Options and many of the configuration file settings allow
for full use of perl regular expressions (with the exception that the
-a, -A, -n and -N options treat '+' and '.' characters as normal
alphabetic characters unless they are preceded by the -noescape
option). Most people only need to know the following special
characters:
^ at start of pattern, means "starts with pattern".
$ at end of pattern, means "ends with pattern".
(...) groups pattern elements as a single element.
? matches preceding element zero or one times.
* matches preceding element zero or more times.
+ matches preceding element one or more times.
. matches any single character.
[...] denotes a class of characters to match. [^...] negates the
class. Inside a class, '-' indicates a range of characters.
(A|B|C) matches if A or B or C matches. Depending on your command
shell, some special characters may need to be escaped on the
command line or enclosed in single-quotes to avoid shell
interpretation.
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EXAMPLES
Summarize requests from commercial domains.
wwwstat -a '.com$'
Summarize requests from the host kiwi.ics.uci.edu
wwwstat -a '^kiwi.ics.uci.edu$'
Summarize requests not from kiwi.ics.uci.edu
wwwstat -A '^kiwi.ics.uci.edu$'
Summarize requests resulting in temporary redirects
wwwstat -c '302'
Summarize requests resulting in server errors
wwwstat -c '^5'
Summarize unsuccessful requests
wwwstat -C '^2' -C '304'
Summarize requests in first week of the month
wwwstat -d ' [1-7] '
Summarize requests in second week of the month
wwwstat -d ' ([89]|1[0-4]) '
Summarize requests in third week of the month
wwwstat -d ' (1[5-9]|2[01]) '
Summarize requests in fourth week of the month
wwwstat -d ' 2[2-8] '
Summarize requests in leftover days of the month
wwwstat -d ' (29|30|31) '
Summarize requests in February
wwwstat -d 'Feb'
Summarize requests in year 1994
wwwstat -d '1994'
Summarize requests not in April
wwwstat -D 'Apr'
Summarize requests between midnight and 1am
wwwstat -t '00'
Summarize requests not received between noon and 1pm
wwwstat -T '12'
Summarize requests with a gif extension
wwwstat -n '.gif$'
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Summarize requests under user's URL
wwwstat -n '^/~user/'
Summarize requests not under "hidden" paths
wwwstat -N '/hidden/'
ENVIRONMENT
HOME Location of user's home directory, placed on INC path.
LOGDIR Used instead of HOME if latter is undefined.
PERLLIB A colon-separated list of directories in which to look for
include and configuration files.
FILES
Unless a pathname is supplied, the configuration files are obtained
from the current directory, the user's home directory (HOME or
LOGDIR), the standard library path (PERLLIB), and the directory
indicated by the command pathname (in that order).
.wwwstatrc User configuration file.
wwwstat.rc System configuration file.
domains.pl Mapping of Internet domain to country or organization.
dnscache.dir
dnscache.pag DBM files for persistent DNS cache.
SEE ALSO
crontab(1), gwstat(1), httpd(1m), perl(1), splitlog(1) More info and
the latest version of wwwstat can be obtained from
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/
ftp://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/ If you have any
suggestions, bug reports, fixes, or enhancements, please join the
<wwwstat-users@ics.uci.edu> mailing list by sending e-mail with
"subscribe" in the subject of the message to the request address
<wwwstat-users-request@ics.uci.edu>. The list is archived at the
above address.
More About HTTP
HTTP/1.1 Proposed Standard
R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. C. Mogul, H. Frystyk, and T. Berners-
Lee. "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", U.C. Irvine,
DEC, MIT/LCS, August 1996.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/
More About Perl
The Perl Language Home Page
http://www.perl.com/perl/index.html
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Johan Vromans' Perl Reference Guide
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jvromans/perlref.html
DIAGNOSTICS
See also the Diagnostic Options above.
"[none] to [none]" dates
wwwstat did not find any matching data to summarize. If you get
such an empty summary, it means that either: 1) there was no
valid data (the input files are all invalid or empty), or 2) none
of the data matched the search options given. Try using the -e
option to show invalid data.
100% unresolved
If the subdomain section indicates that all of the client
requests come from unresolved hostnames (IP addresses), this
probably means that your server is running without DNS resolution
(common for very busy sites). You can use the -dns option to
have wwwstat perform the hostname lookups. If 100% of the hosts
are still unresolved with the -dns option in effect, then it may
be that all of the clients accessing your server are doing so
from temporary SLIP/PPP addresses without DNS names, or it may be
a problem with wwwstat's DNS cache (delete the cache files), with
your system's DNS software (contact your system administrator),
or with your network connection.
NOTES
Hits vs Requests vs Visitors
wwwstat counts HTTP requests received by the server. When a request
is successful, it is often referred to as a "hit". Retrieving a single
image is one GET request. Retrieving an HTML page is also one GET
request, but that does not include the separate requests made for in-
line images or related objects. Checking to see if a cached image is
still valid (a HEAD or conditional GET) is also one request. In all
sections except the archive section, wwwstat shows the statistics for
all requests (successful or not). In the archive section, it normally
shows all non-successful requests under a special category for the
status code and only successful requests (hits) under the URL or
archive tree associated with the request. However, this grouping of
non-successful requests is disabled when wwwstat is used with the
search options -n, -c, and -C, since those options are normally used
for finding error conditions. wwwstat does not count "visitors" --
individual people or programs making the requests. HTTP does not, by
default, provide any information that can be accurately correlated to
an individual person, though it is possible (in an unreliable manner)
to use HTTP extensions and request profiles as a means of tracking
individual client programs. Such tracking requires extensive
resources (memory and diskspace) and is often considered a violation
of privacy. With the exception of the ident section, wwwstat does not
reveal information about the individual people making requests.
Unless the output is limited to a specific URL or a specific hostname,
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wwwstat's output does not connect the requester to the URL being
requested.
Common Logfile Format
The httpd common logfile format (CLF) was defined in early 1994 as the
result of discussions among server and access_log analyzer developers
(Roy Fielding, John Franks, Kevin Hughes, Ari Luotonen, Rob McCool,
and Tony Sanders) on how to make it easier for analysis tools to be
used across multiple servers. The format is: remote_host ident
authuser [date-time zone] "Request-Line" Status-Code bytes
where means
------------ --------------------------------------
remote_host Client DNS hostname or IP address
ident Identity check token or "-"
authuser Authorization user-id or "-"
date-time dd/Mmm/yyyy:hh:mm:ss
zone +dddd or -dddd
Request-Line The first line of the HTTP request, which normally
includes the method, URL, and HTTP-version.
Status-Code Response status from server or "-"
bytes Size of Entity-Body transmitted or "-"
------------ -------------------------------------- with each field
separated by a single space (it turns out that problems
occur if the ident token contains a space, which was
not anticipated by the original designers).
LIMITATIONS
wwwstat cannot be more accurate than its input. The common logfile
format does not include the amount of bytes transferred in HTTP header
fields and in error responses. wwwstat attempts to estimate those
bytes based on the response code. Although the built-in estimates
will suffice for most applications, your results will be more accurate
if the estimates are customized for the particular server software
that generated the logfile. Modern httpd servers have extended the
CLF to include additional fields (Referer and User-Agent) or to make
the entire format configurable. Although wwwstat is able to read
logfiles which append information to the CLF, it will not make use of
that additional information. However, wwwstat is written in perl, so
if you want to parse a different format all you have to do is change
the parsing code. wwwstat does not do anything with Referer [sic] or
User-Agent information that may be present in extended logfiles. In
order to do anything interesting with Referer, the program would have
to build a Request-URI x Referer x Count table, which would require
huge gobs of memory and is better done using a separate program with a
persistent database. Naturally, this is easy to do once you learn
perl.
AUTHOR
Roy Fielding (fielding@ics.uci.edu), University of California, Irvine.
Please do not send questions or requests to the author, since the
number of requests has long since overwhelmed his ability to reply,
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and all future support will be through the mailing list (see above).
wwwstat was originally based on a multi-server statistics program
called fwgstat-0.035 by Jonathan Magid (jem@sunsite.unc.edu) which, in
turn, was heavily based on xferstats (packaged with the version 17 of
the Wuarchive FTP daemon) by Chris Myers (chris@wugate.wustl.edu).
This work has been sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency under Grant Numbers MDA972-91-J-1010 and F30602-94-C-
0218. This software does not necessarily reflect the position or
policy of the U.S. Government and no official endorsement should be
inferred.
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