Apache Log Helper

This is a shell script I wrote to help me with my web server logs.

Usage: alh [OPTION]... [PATTERN(S)]
Apache Log Helper.  View/search Apache log files.
The log file is grepped for PATTERN(s) if specified.
By default log files are looked for in /var/log/apache/.

-a          Use the alternate log file error.log.
-A          Use the alternate log file referer.log.
-c          Print only the number of lines matched.
-d          Print the command(s) that would execute. (Debug)
-e          Exclude local IP addresses.
-E          Use egrep in place of grep.
-f <file>   Obtain patterns from <file>. 
-F          Use fgrep in place of grep.
-h          Print this help text and exit.
-i          Ignore case on all matches.
-l <file>   Use <file> in place of access.log.
-n <lines>  Output <lines> lines when using -t.
-o          Use previous version of log file. Eg. access.log.0
-p          Send output to $PAGER or more.
-t          Send the output to tail.
-x <filter> Filter the output with the inverted pattern <filter>.
-X <file>   Same as -x but obtain patterns from <file>.

To install ALH simply follow these steps:

1. Uncompress ALH using either unzip alh.zip or gunzip alh.gz.
2. Modify the variables at the top of the file to suite your environment.
3. Make the file executable using chmod +x alh.
4. Copy it to a directory in your path, /usr/local/bin is a good location.

It is available as PKZip and Gzip. Last updated 2005-12-16.

Changes:

• 2005-10-28:
  Added the -A option for the referer log.
• 2005-12-16:
  Added the -n option for the number of lines to output when using -t.

Note: I have only tested alh on my Linux servers at work and minimally on my Mac OS 10.2.8 PowerBook. I have not encountered any problems. Since I use the getopt program to parse the command line arguments ALH will not work everywhere. getopt is not always available and there are different implementations when it is.

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