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I want to look through my apache access log backwards. How can I do that on Ubuntu?

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6 Answers

up vote 8 down vote accepted

print the file from the last line to the first one (the older the line is the more it will be printed close to the end):

tac /my/file | less
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up vote 3 down vote

have you tried the command "tac"? It cats files backwards.

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up vote 1 down vote

First You may configure your /etc/logrotate.conf, man logrotate for more information. You can specify some infomations : If you want to rotate log files weekly and keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs 


weekly
rotate 4

After you can browse you log 4 weeks ago, using you favorite viewer, like awstat, tail -f ...

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interesting...what if i have 8 websites on one server ...that's 8 access logs? – Tony Sep 9 '09 at 14:14
The rotation is made for all /etc/logrotate.d file. and by default for all /var/log/apache2/*.log – mezgani Sep 9 '09 at 15:45
Whether or not your 8 websites create separate log files depends on the configuration of each site. If you use apache, you should/could have an individual vhost config file per site where you can define the logfiles. – wolfgangsz Sep 9 '09 at 16:35
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up vote 1 down vote

Go to the end of the file and press the up arrow?

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up vote 0 down vote

If a rotation is made, look into the configuration of the rotation. If a rotation is made every 4 days, that means that you will have to look on the archive made 4 days ago in order to read the period of time log.

You will find in the log directory tar.gz files (which are archives of the log) like samba.1.tar.gz, samba.2.tar.gz simply extract the file you want 

tar -zxvf samba.2.tar.gz

and you will be able to read old logs.

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up vote 0 down vote

do you mean tail the logfile? use tail -f to monitor the logfile.

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no, i mean navigate the file backwards – Tony Sep 9 '09 at 14:05
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