Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2
Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2
This document refers to the 2.2 version of Apache httpd, which is no longer maintained. The active release is documented here. If you have not already upgraded, please follow this link for more information.
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| Description: | Logging of the requests made to the server |
|---|---|
| Status: | Base |
| Module Identifier: | log_config_module |
| Source File: | mod_log_config.c |
This module provides for flexible logging of client requests. Logs are written in a customizable format, and may be written directly to a file, or to an external program. Conditional logging is provided so that individual requests may be included or excluded from the logs based on characteristics of the request.
Three directives are provided by this module:
TransferLog to create
a log file, LogFormat
to set a custom format, and CustomLog to define a log file and format in one
step. The TransferLog and CustomLog directives can be used multiple times in each
server to cause each request to be logged to multiple files.
The format argument to the LogFormat and CustomLog directives is a string. This string is
used to log each request to the log file. It can contain literal
characters copied into the log files and the C-style control
characters "\n" and "\t" to represent new-lines and tabs.
Literal quotes and backslashes should be escaped with
backslashes.
The characteristics of the request itself are logged by
placing "%" directives in the format string, which are
replaced in the log file by the values as follows:
| Format String | Description | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
%% |
The percent sign | ||||||||||
%a |
Remote IP-address | ||||||||||
%A |
Local IP-address | ||||||||||
%B |
Size of response in bytes, excluding HTTP headers. | ||||||||||
%b |
Size of response in bytes, excluding HTTP headers. In CLF format, i.e.
a '-' rather than a 0 when no bytes are sent. | ||||||||||
%{Foobar}C |
The contents of cookie Foobar in the request sent to the server. Only version 0 cookies are fully supported. | ||||||||||
%D |
The time taken to serve the request, in microseconds. | ||||||||||
%{FOOBAR}e |
The contents of the environment variable FOOBAR | ||||||||||
%f |
Filename | ||||||||||
%h |
Remote host | ||||||||||
%H |
The request protocol | ||||||||||
%{Foobar}i |
The contents of Foobar: header line(s)
in the request sent to the server. Changes made by other
modules (e.g. mod_headers) affect this. If you're
interested in what the request header was prior to when most
modules would have modified it, use mod_setenvif
to copy the header into an internal environment variable and log
that value with the %{VARNAME}e described
above.
| ||||||||||
%k |
Number of keepalive requests handled on this connection. Interesting if
KeepAlive is being used, so that,
for example, a '1' means the first keepalive request after the initial
one, '2' the second, etc...;
otherwise this is always 0 (indicating the initial request).
Available in versions 2.2.11 and later. | ||||||||||
%l |
Remote logname (from identd, if supplied). This will return a
dash unless mod_ident is present and IdentityCheck is set
On. | ||||||||||
%m |
The request method | ||||||||||
%{Foobar}n |
The contents of note Foobar from another module. | ||||||||||
%{Foobar}o |
The contents of Foobar: header line(s)
in the reply. | ||||||||||
%p |
The canonical port of the server serving the request | ||||||||||
%{format}p |
The canonical port of the server serving the request or the
server's actual port or the client's actual port. Valid formats
are canonical, local, or remote.
| ||||||||||
%P |
The process ID of the child that serviced the request. | ||||||||||
%{format}P |
The process ID or thread id of the child that serviced the
request. Valid formats are pid, tid,
and hextid. hextid requires APR 1.2.0 or
higher.
| ||||||||||
%q |
The query string (prepended with a ? if a query
string exists, otherwise an empty string) | ||||||||||
%r |
First line of request | ||||||||||
%R |
The handler generating the response (if any). | ||||||||||
%s |
Status. For requests that got internally redirected, this is
the status of the *original* request --- %>s
for the last. | ||||||||||
%t |
Time the request was received (standard english format) | ||||||||||
%{format}t |
The time, in the form given by format, which should be in
an extended strftime(3) format (potentially localized).
If the format starts with begin: (default) the time is taken
at the beginning of the request processing. If it starts with
end: it is the time when the log entry gets written,
close to the end of the request processing. In addition to the formats
supported by strftime(3), the following format tokens are
supported:
strftime(3)
formatting in the same format string. You can use multiple
%{format}t tokens instead. The extended
strftime(3) tokens are available in 2.2.30 and later.
| ||||||||||
%T |
The time taken to serve the request, in seconds. | ||||||||||
%{UNIT}T |
The time taken to serve the request, in a time unit given by
UNIT. Valid units are ms for milliseconds,
us for microseconds, and s for seconds.
Using s gives the same result as %T
without any format; using us gives the same result
as %D. Combining %T with a unit is
available in 2.2.30 and later. | ||||||||||
%u |
Remote user (from auth; may be bogus if return status
(%s) is 401) | ||||||||||
%U |
The URL path requested, not including any query string. | ||||||||||
%v |
The canonical ServerName
of the server serving the request. | ||||||||||
%V |
The server name according to the UseCanonicalName setting. | ||||||||||
%X |
Connection status when response is completed:
(This directive was | ||||||||||
%I |
Bytes received, including request and headers, cannot be zero.
You need to enable mod_logio to use this. | ||||||||||
%O |
Bytes sent, including headers, cannot be zero. You need to
enable mod_logio to use this. | ||||||||||
%{VARNAME}^ti |
The contents of VARNAME: trailer line(s)
in the request sent to the server. | ||||||||||
%{VARNAME}^to |
The contents of VARNAME: trailer line(s)
in the response sent from the server. |
Particular items can be restricted to print only for
responses with specific HTTP status codes by placing a
comma-separated list of status codes immediately following the
"%". For example, "%400,501{User-agent}i" logs
User-agent on 400 errors and 501 errors only. For
other status codes, the literal string "-" will be
logged. The status code list may be preceded by a
"!" to indicate negation:
"%!200,304,302{Referer}i" logs Referer
on all requests that do not return one of the three
specified codes.
The modifiers "<" and ">" can be used for requests that
have been internally redirected to choose whether the original
or final (respectively) request should be consulted. By
default, the % directives %s, %U, %T,
%D, and %r look at the original request
while all others look at the final request. So for example,
%>s can be used to record the final status of
the request and %<u can be used to record the
original authenticated user on a request that is internally
redirected to an unauthenticated resource.
For security reasons, starting with version 2.0.46,
non-printable and other special characters in %r,
%i and %o are escaped using
\xhh sequences, where hh
stands for the hexadecimal representation of the raw
byte. Exceptions from this rule are " and
\, which are escaped by prepending a backslash, and
all whitespace characters, which are written in their C-style
notation (\n, \t, etc). In versions
prior to 2.0.46, no escaping was performed on these strings so
you had to be quite careful when dealing with raw log files.
In httpd 2.0, unlike 1.3, the %b and
%B format strings do not represent the number of
bytes sent to the client, but simply the size in bytes of the
HTTP response (which will differ, for instance, if the
connection is aborted, or if SSL is used). The %O
format provided by mod_logio will log the
actual number of bytes sent over the network.
Note: mod_cache is implemented as a
quick-handler and not as a standard handler. Therefore, the
%R format string will not return any handler
information when content caching is involved.
Some commonly used log format strings are:
"%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b""%v %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b""%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\"
\"%{User-agent}i\"""%{Referer}i -> %U""%{User-agent}i"You can use the %{format}t directive multiple
times to build up a time format using the extended format tokens
like msec_frac:
"%{%d/%b/%Y %T}t.%{msec_frac}t %{%z}t"See the security tips document for details on why your security could be compromised if the directory where logfiles are stored is writable by anyone other than the user that starts the server.
| Description: | Buffer log entries in memory before writing to disk |
|---|---|
| Syntax: | BufferedLogs On|Off |
| Default: | BufferedLogs Off |
| Context: | server config |
| Status: | Base |
| Module: | mod_log_config |
| Compatibility: | Available in versions 2.0.41 and later. |
The BufferedLogs directive causes
mod_log_config to store several log entries in
memory and write them together to disk, rather than writing them
after each request. On some systems, this may result in more
efficient disk access and hence higher performance. It may be
set only once for the entire server; it cannot be configured
per virtual-host.
| Description: | Sets filename for the logging of cookies |
|---|---|
| Syntax: | CookieLog filename |
| Context: | server config, virtual host |
| Status: | Base |
| Module: | mod_log_config |
| Compatibility: | This directive is deprecated. |
The CookieLog directive sets the
filename for logging of cookies. The filename is relative to the
ServerRoot. This directive is
included only for compatibility with mod_cookies,
and is deprecated.
| Description: | Sets filename and format of log file |
|---|---|
| Syntax: | CustomLog file|pipe
format|nickname
[env=[!]environment-variable] |
| Context: | server config, virtual host |
| Status: | Base |
| Module: | mod_log_config |
The CustomLog directive is used to
log requests to the server. A log format is specified, and the
logging can optionally be made conditional on request
characteristics using environment variables.
The first argument, which specifies the location to which the logs will be written, can take one of the following two types of values:
ServerRoot.|", followed by the path
to a program to receive the log information on its standard
input. See the notes on piped logs
for more information.
If a program is used, then it will be run as the user who
started httpd. This will be root if the server was
started by root; be sure that the program is secure.
When entering a file path on non-Unix platforms, care should be taken to make sure that only forward slashed are used even though the platform may allow the use of back slashes. In general it is a good idea to always use forward slashes throughout the configuration files.
The second argument specifies what will be written to the
log file. It can specify either a nickname defined by
a previous LogFormat
directive, or it can be an explicit format string as
described in the log formats section.
For example, the following two sets of directives have exactly the same effect:
# CustomLog with format nickname
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
CustomLog logs/access_log common
# CustomLog with explicit format string
CustomLog logs/access_log "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b"
The third argument is optional and controls whether or
not to log a particular request based on the
presence or absence of a particular variable in the server
environment. If the specified environment
variable is set for the request (or is not set, in the case
of a 'env=!name' clause), then the
request will be logged.
Environment variables can be set on a per-request
basis using the mod_setenvif
and/or mod_rewrite modules. For
example, if you want to record requests for all GIF
images on your server in a separate logfile but not in your main
log, you can use:
SetEnvIf Request_URI \.gif$ gif-image
CustomLog gif-requests.log common env=gif-image
CustomLog nongif-requests.log common env=!gif-image
Or, to reproduce the behavior of the old RefererIgnore directive, you might use the following:
SetEnvIf Referer example\.com localreferer
CustomLog referer.log referer env=!localreferer
| Description: | Describes a format for use in a log file |
|---|---|
| Syntax: | LogFormat format|nickname
[nickname] |
| Default: | LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" |
| Context: | server config, virtual host |
| Status: | Base |
| Module: | mod_log_config |
This directive specifies the format of the access log file.
The LogFormat directive can take one of two
forms. In the first form, where only one argument is specified,
this directive sets the log format which will be used by logs
specified in subsequent TransferLog
directives. The single argument can specify an explicit
format as discussed in the custom log
formats section above. Alternatively, it can use a
nickname to refer to a log format defined in a
previous LogFormat directive as described
below.
The second form of the LogFormat
directive associates an explicit format with a
nickname. This nickname can then be used in
subsequent LogFormat or
CustomLog directives
rather than repeating the entire format string. A
LogFormat directive that defines a nickname
does nothing else -- that is, it only
defines the nickname, it doesn't actually apply the format and make
it the default. Therefore, it will not affect subsequent
TransferLog directives.
In addition, LogFormat cannot use one nickname
to define another nickname. Note that the nickname should not contain
percent signs (%).
LogFormat "%v %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" vhost_common
| Description: | Specify location of a log file |
|---|---|
| Syntax: | TransferLog file|pipe |
| Context: | server config, virtual host |
| Status: | Base |
| Module: | mod_log_config |
This directive has exactly the same arguments and effect as
the CustomLog
directive, with the exception that it does not allow the log format
to be specified explicitly or for conditional logging of requests.
Instead, the log format is determined by the most recently specified
LogFormat directive
which does not define a nickname. Common Log Format is used if no
other format has been specified.
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\""
TransferLog logs/access_log