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https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess

GoAccess is a real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser.
https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess

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GoAccess is a real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser.

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README 

        
GoAccess [![C build](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/actions/workflows/build-test.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/actions/workflows/build-test.yml) [![GoAccess](https://goaccess.io/badge)](https://goaccess.io)

========



## What is it? ##

GoAccess is an open source **real-time web log analyzer** and interactive

viewer that runs in a **terminal** on *nix systems or through your

**browser**. It provides **fast** and valuable HTTP statistics for system

administrators that require a visual server report on the fly.

More info at: [https://goaccess.io](https://goaccess.io/?src=gh).



[![GoAccess Terminal Dashboard](https://goaccess.io/images/goaccess-real-time-term-gh.png?2022011901)](https://goaccess.io/)

[![GoAccess HTML Dashboard](https://goaccess.io/images/goaccess-real-time-html-gh.png?202201190)](https://rt.goaccess.io/?src=gh)



## Features ##

GoAccess parses the specified web log file and outputs the data to the X

terminal. Features include:



* **Completely Real Time**


  All panels and metrics are timed to be updated every 200 ms on the terminal

  output and every second on the HTML output.



* **Minimal Configuration needed**


  You can just run it against your access log file, pick the log format and let

  GoAccess parse the access log and show you the stats.



* **Track Application Response Time**


  Track the time taken to serve the request. Extremely useful if you want to

  track pages that are slowing down your site.



* **Nearly All Web Log Formats**


  GoAccess allows any custom log format string.  Predefined options include,

  Apache, Nginx, Amazon S3, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFront, etc.



* **Incremental Log Processing**


  Need data persistence? GoAccess has the ability to process logs incrementally

  through the on-disk persistence options.



* **Only one dependency**


  GoAccess is written in C. To run it, you only need ncurses as a dependency.

  That's it. It even features its own Web Socket server — http://gwsocket.io/.



* **Visitors**


  Determine the amount of hits, visitors, bandwidth, and metrics for slowest

  running requests by the hour, or date.



* **Metrics per Virtual Host**


  Have multiple Virtual Hosts (Server Blocks)? It features a panel that

  displays which virtual host is consuming most of the web server resources.



* **ASN (Autonomous System Number mapping)**


  Great for detecting malicious traffic patterns and block them accordingly.



* **Color Scheme Customizable**


  Tailor GoAccess to suit your own color taste/schemes. Either through the

  terminal, or by simply applying the stylesheet on the HTML output.



* **Support for Large Datasets**


  GoAccess features the ability to parse large logs due to its optimized

  in-memory hash tables. It has very good memory usage and pretty good

  performance. This storage has support for on-disk persistence as well.



* **Docker Support**


  Ability to build GoAccess' Docker image from upstream. You can still fully

  configure it, by using Volume mapping and editing `goaccess.conf`.  See

  [Docker](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess#docker) section below.



### Nearly all web log formats... ###

GoAccess allows any custom log format string. Predefined options include, but

not limited to:



* Amazon CloudFront (Download Distribution).

* Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

* AWS Elastic Load Balancing

* Combined Log Format (XLF/ELF) Apache | Nginx

* Common Log Format (CLF) Apache

* Google Cloud Storage.

* Apache virtual hosts

* Squid Native Format.

* W3C format (IIS).

* Caddy's JSON Structured format.

* Traefik's CLF flavor



## Why GoAccess? ##

GoAccess was designed to be a fast, terminal-based log analyzer. Its core idea

is to quickly analyze and view web server statistics in real time without

needing to use your browser (_great if you want to do a quick analysis of your

access log via SSH, or if you simply love working in the terminal_).



While the terminal output is the default output, it has the capability to

generate a complete, self-contained, real-time [**`HTML`**](https://rt.goaccess.io/?src=gh)

report, as well as a [**`JSON`**](https://goaccess.io/json?src=gh), and

[**`CSV`**](https://goaccess.io/goaccess_csv_report.csv?src=gh) report.



You can see it more of a monitor command tool than anything else.



## Installation ##



### Build from release



GoAccess can be compiled and used on *nix systems.



Download, extract and compile GoAccess with:



    $ wget https://tar.goaccess.io/goaccess-1.9.3.tar.gz

    $ tar -xzvf goaccess-1.9.3.tar.gz

    $ cd goaccess-1.9.3/

    $ ./configure --enable-utf8 --enable-geoip=mmdb

    $ make

    # make install



### Build from GitHub (Development) ###



    $ git clone https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess.git

    $ cd goaccess

    $ autoreconf -fiv

    $ ./configure --enable-utf8 --enable-geoip=mmdb

    $ make

    # make install



### Distributions ###



It is easiest to install GoAccess on GNU+Linux using the preferred package manager

of your GNU+Linux distribution. Please note that not all distributions will have

the latest version of GoAccess available.



#### Debian/Ubuntu ####



    # apt-get install goaccess



**Note:** It is likely this will install an outdated version of GoAccess. To

make sure that you're running the latest stable version of GoAccess see

alternative option below.



#### Official GoAccess Debian & Ubuntu repository ####



    $ wget -O - https://deb.goaccess.io/gnugpg.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/goaccess.gpg >/dev/null

    $ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/goaccess.gpg arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://deb.goaccess.io/ $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/goaccess.list

    $ sudo apt-get update

    $ sudo apt-get install goaccess



**Note**:

* `.deb` packages in the official repo are available through HTTPS as well. You may need to install `apt-transport-https`.



#### Fedora ####



    # yum install goaccess



#### Arch ####



    # pacman -S goaccess



#### Gentoo ####



    # emerge net-analyzer/goaccess



#### OS X / Homebrew ####



    # brew install goaccess



#### FreeBSD ####



    # cd /usr/ports/sysutils/goaccess/ && make install clean

    # pkg install sysutils/goaccess



#### OpenBSD ####



    # cd /usr/ports/www/goaccess && make install clean

    # pkg_add goaccess



#### openSUSE  ####



    # zypper ar -f obs://server:http http

    # zypper in goaccess



#### OpenIndiana ####



    # pkg install goaccess



#### pkgsrc (NetBSD, Solaris, SmartOS, ...) ####



    # pkgin install goaccess



#### Windows ####



GoAccess can be used in Windows through Cygwin. See Cygwin's packages.  Or through the

GNU+Linux Subsystem on Windows 10.



#### Distribution Packages ####



GoAccess has minimal requirements, it's written in C and requires only ncurses.

However, below is a table of some optional dependencies in some distros to

build GoAccess from source.



| Distro                 | NCurses          | GeoIP (opt)      | GeoIP2 (opt)          |  OpenSSL (opt)     |

| ---------------------- | ---------------- | ---------------- | --------------------- | -------------------|

| **Ubuntu/Debian**      | libncurses-dev   | libgeoip-dev     | libmaxminddb-dev      |  libssl-dev        |

| **RHEL/CentOS**        | ncurses-devel    | geoip-devel      | libmaxminddb-devel    |  openssl-devel     |

| **Arch**               | ncurses          | geoip            | libmaxminddb          |  openssl           |

| **Gentoo**             | sys-libs/ncurses | dev-libs/geoip   | dev-libs/libmaxminddb |  dev-libs/openssl  |

| **Slackware**          | ncurses          | GeoIP            | libmaxminddb          |  openssl           |



**Note**: You may need to install build tools like `gcc`, `autoconf`,

`gettext`, `autopoint` etc. for compiling/building software from source. e.g.,

`base-devel`, `build-essential`, `"Development Tools"`.



#### Docker ####



A Docker image has been updated, capable of directing output from an access log. If you only want to output a report, you can pipe a log from the external environment to a Docker-based process:



    touch report.html

    cat access.log | docker run --rm -i -v ./report.html:/report.html -e LANG=$LANG allinurl/goaccess -a -o report.html --log-format COMBINED -



OR real-time



    tail -F access.log | docker run -p 7890:7890 --rm -i -e LANG=$LANG allinurl/goaccess -a -o report.html --log-format COMBINED --real-time-html -



##### Build in isolated container



You can also build the binary for Debian based systems in an isolated container environment to prevent cluttering your local system with the development libraries:



    $ curl -L "https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/archive/refs/heads/master.tar.gz" | tar -xz && cd goaccess-master

    $ docker build -t goaccess/build.debian-12 -f Dockerfile.debian-12 .

    $ docker run -i --rm -v $PWD:/goaccess goaccess/build.debian-12 > goaccess



You can read more about using the docker image in [DOCKER.md](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/blob/master/DOCKER.md).



## Storage ##



#### Default Hash Tables ####



In-memory storage provides better performance at the cost of limiting the

dataset size to the amount of available physical memory. GoAccess uses

in-memory hash tables.  It has very good memory usage and pretty good

performance. This storage has support for on-disk persistence as well.



## Command Line / Config Options ##

See [**options**](https://goaccess.io/man#options) that can be supplied to the command or

specified in the configuration file. If specified in the configuration file, long

options need to be used without prepending `--`.



## Usage / Examples ##

**Note**: Piping data into GoAccess won't prompt a log/date/time

configuration dialog, you will need to previously define it in your

configuration file or in the command line.



### Getting Started ###



To output to a terminal and generate an interactive report:



    # goaccess access.log



To generate an HTML report:



    # goaccess access.log -a > report.html



To generate a JSON report file:



    # goaccess access.log -a -d -o report.json



To generate a CSV report to stdout:



    # goaccess access.log --no-csv-summary -o csv



GoAccess also allows great flexibility for real-time filtering and parsing. For

instance, to quickly diagnose issues by monitoring logs since goaccess was

started:



    # tail -f access.log | goaccess -



And even better, to filter while maintaining opened a pipe to preserve

real-time analysis, we can make use of `tail -f` and a matching pattern tool

such as `grep`, `awk`, `sed`, etc.:



    # tail -f access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'firefox' | goaccess --log-format=COMBINED -



or to parse from the beginning of the file while maintaining the pipe opened

and applying a filter



    # tail -f -n +0 access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'firefox' | goaccess -o report.html --real-time-html -



### Multiple Log files ###



There are several ways to parse multiple logs with GoAccess. The simplest is to

pass multiple log files to the command line:



    # goaccess access.log access.log.1



It's even possible to parse files from a pipe while reading regular files:



    # cat access.log.2 | goaccess access.log access.log.1 -



**Note**: the single dash is appended to the command line to let GoAccess

know that it should read from the pipe.



Now if we want to add more flexibility to GoAccess, we can use `zcat --force`

to read compressed and uncompressed files. For instance, if we would

like to process all log files `access.log*`, we can do:



    # zcat --force access.log* | goaccess -



_Note_: On Mac OS X, use `gunzip -c` instead of `zcat`.



### Multi-thread Support ###



Use `--jobs=` (or `-j`) to enable multi-thread parsing. For example:



    # goaccess access.log -o report.html -j 4



And use `--chunk-size=<256-32768>` to adjust chunk size, the default chunk size is 1024. For example:



    # goaccess access.log -o report.html -j 4 --chunk-size=8192



### Real-time HTML outputs ###



GoAccess has the ability the output real-time data in the HTML report. You can

even email the HTML file since it is composed of a single file with no external

file dependencies, how neat is that!



The process of generating a real-time HTML report is very similar to the

process of creating a static report. Only `--real-time-html` is needed to make

it real-time.



    # goaccess access.log -o /usr/share/nginx/html/your_site/report.html --real-time-html



To view the report you can navigate to `http://your_site/report.html`.



By default, GoAccess will use the host name of the generated report.

Optionally, you can specify the URL to which the client's browser will connect

to. See [FAQ](https://goaccess.io/faq) for a more detailed example.



    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --ws-url=goaccess.io



By default, GoAccess listens on port 7890, to use a different port other than

7890, you can specify it as (make sure the port is opened):



    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --port=9870



And to bind the WebSocket server to a different address other than 0.0.0.0, you

can specify it as:



    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --addr=127.0.0.1



**Note**: To output real time data over a TLS/SSL connection, you need to use

`--ssl-cert=` and `--ssl-key=`.



### Filtering ###



#### Working with dates ####



Another useful pipe would be filtering dates out of the web log



The following will get all HTTP requests starting on `05/Dec/2010` until the

end of the file.



    # sed -n '/05\/Dec\/2010/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -a -



or using relative dates such as yesterdays or tomorrows day:



    # sed -n '/'$(date '+%d\/%b\/%Y' -d '1 week ago')'/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -a -



If we want to parse only a certain time-frame from DATE a to DATE b, we can do:



    # sed -n '/5\/Nov\/2010/,/5\/Dec\/2010/ p' access.log | goaccess -a -



If we want to preserve only certain amount of data and recycle storage, we can

keep only a certain number of days. For instance to keep & show the last 5

days:



    # goaccess access.log --keep-last=5



#### Virtual hosts ####



Assuming your log contains the virtual host field. For instance:



    vhost.io:80 8.8.4.4 - - [02/Mar/2016:08:14:04 -0600] "GET /shop HTTP/1.1" 200 615 "-" "Googlebot-Image/1.0"



And you would like to append the virtual host to the request in order to see

which virtual host the top urls belong to:



    awk '$8=$1$8' access.log | goaccess -a -



To do the same, but also use real-time filtering and parsing:



    tail -f  access.log | unbuffer -p awk '$8=$1$8' | goaccess -a -



To exclude a list of virtual hosts you can do the following:



    # grep -v "`cat exclude_vhost_list_file`" vhost_access.log | goaccess -



#### Files, status codes and bots ####



To parse specific pages, e.g., page views, `html`, `htm`, `php`, etc. within a

request:



    # awk '$7~/\.html|\.htm|\.php/' access.log | goaccess -



Note, `$7` is the request field for the common and combined log format,

(without Virtual Host), if your log includes Virtual Host, then you probably

want to use `$8` instead. It's best to check which field you are shooting for,

e.g.:



    # tail -10 access.log | awk '{print $8}'



Or to parse a specific status code, e.g., 500 (Internal Server Error):



    # awk '$9~/500/' access.log | goaccess -



Or multiple status codes, e.g., all 3xx and 5xx:



    # tail -f -n +0 access.log | awk '$9~/3[0-9]{2}|5[0-9]{2}/' | goaccess -o out.html -



And to get an estimated overview of how many bots (crawlers) are hitting your server:



    # tail -F -n +0 access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'bot' | goaccess -



### Tips ###



Also, it is worth pointing out that if we want to run GoAccess at lower

priority, we can run it as:



    # nice -n 19 goaccess -f access.log -a



and if you don't want to install it on your server, you can still run it from

your local machine!



    # ssh -n root@server 'tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log' | goaccess -



**Note:** SSH requires `-n` so GoAccess can read from stdin. Also, make sure to

use SSH keys for authentication as it won't work if a passphrase is required.



#### Troubleshooting ####



We receive many questions and issues that have been answered previously.



* Date/time matching problems? Check that your log format and the system locale in which you run GoAccess match. See [#1571](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues/1571#issuecomment-543186858)

* Problems with pattern matching? Spaces are often a problem, see for instance [#136](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues/136), [#1579](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues/1579)

* Other issues matching log entries: See [>200 closed issues regarding log/date/time formats](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+label%3A%22log%2Fdate%2Ftime+format%22)

* Problems with log processing? See [>111 issues regarding log processing](https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed+label%3Alog-processing)



#### Incremental log processing ####



GoAccess has the ability to process logs incrementally through its internal

storage and dump its data to disk. It works in the following way:



1. A dataset must be persisted first with `--persist`, then the same dataset

can be loaded with.

2. `--restore`.  If new data is passed (piped or through a log file), it will

append it to the original dataset.



##### NOTES #####



GoAccess keeps track of inodes of all the files processed (assuming files will

stay on the same partition), in addition, it extracts a snippet of data from

the log along with the last line parsed of each file and the timestamp of the

last line parsed. e.g., `inode:29627417|line:20012|ts:20171231235059`



First, it compares if the snippet matches the log being parsed, if it does, it

assumes the log hasn't changed drastically, e.g., hasn't been truncated. If

the inode does not match the current file, it parses all lines. If the current

file matches the inode, it then reads the remaining lines and updates the count

of lines parsed and the timestamp. As an extra precaution, it won't parse log

lines with a timestamp ≤ than the one stored.



Piped  data works based off the timestamp of the last line read. For instance,

it will parse and discard all incoming entries until it finds a timestamp >=

than the one stored.



##### Examples #####



    // last month access log

    # goaccess access.log.1 --persist



then, load it with



    // append this month access log, and preserve new data

    # goaccess access.log --restore --persist



To read persisted data only (without parsing new data)



    # goaccess --restore



## Contributing ##



Any help on GoAccess is welcome. The most helpful way is to try it out and give

feedback. Feel free to use the GitHub issue tracker and pull requests to

discuss and submit code changes.



You can contribute to our translations by editing the .po files direct on GitHub or using the visual interface [inlang.com](https://inlang.com/editor/github.com/allinurl/goaccess)



[![translation badge](https://inlang.com/badge?url=github.com/allinurl/goaccess)](https://inlang.com/editor/github.com/allinurl/goaccess?ref=badge)



Enjoy!