goaccess(1) User Manuals goaccess(1)
NAME
goaccess - fast web log analyzer and interactive viewer.
SYNOPSIS
goaccess [filename] [options...] [-c][-M][-H][-q][-d][...]
DESCRIPTION
goaccess GoAccess is an open source real-time web log analyzer and in-
teractive viewer that runs in a terminal in *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.
GoAccess parses the specified web log file and outputs the data to the X
terminal. Features include:
General Statistics:
This panel gives a summary of several metrics, such as the number
of valid and invalid requests, time taken to analyze the dataset,
unique visitors, requested files, static files (CSS, ICO, JPG,
etc) HTTP referrers, 404s, size of the parsed log file and band-
width consumption.
Unique visitors
This panel shows metrics such as hits, unique visitors and cumu-
lative bandwidth per date. HTTP requests containing the same IP,
the same date, and the same user agent are considered a unique
visitor. By default, it includes web crawlers/spiders.
Optionally, date specificity can be set to the hour level using
--date-spec=hr which will display dates such as 05/Jun/2016:16,
or to the minute level producing 05/Jun/2016:16:59. This is great
if you want to track your daily traffic at the hour or minute
level.
Requested files
This panel displays the most requested (non-static) files on your
web server. It shows hits, unique visitors, and percentage,
along with the cumulative bandwidth, protocol, and the request
method used.
Requested static files
Lists the most frequently static files such as: JPG, CSS, SWF,
JS, GIF, and PNG file types, along with the same metrics as the
last panel. Additional static files can be added to the configu-
ration file.
404 or Not Found
Displays the same metrics as the previous request panels, how-
ever, its data contains all pages that were not found on the
server, or commonly known as 404 status code.
Hosts This panel has detailed information on the hosts themselves. This
is great for spotting aggressive crawlers and identifying who's
eating your bandwidth.
Expanding the panel can display more information such as host's
reverse DNS lookup result, country of origin and city. If the -a
argument is enabled, a list of user agents can be displayed by
selecting the desired IP address, and then pressing ENTER.
Operating Systems
This panel will report which operating system the host used when
it hit the server. It attempts to provide the most specific ver-
sion of each operating system.
Browsers
This panel will report which browser the host used when it hit
the server. It attempts to provide the most specific version of
each browser.
Visit Times
This panel will display an hourly report. This option displays 24
data points, one for each hour of the day.
Optionally, hour specificity can be set to the tenth of an hour
level using --hour-spec=min which will display hours as 16:4 This
is great if you want to spot peaks of traffic on your server.
Virtual Hosts
This panel will display all the different virtual hosts parsed
from the access log. This panel is displayed if %v is used within
the log-format string.
Referrers URLs
If the host in question accessed the site via another resource,
or was linked/diverted to you from another host, the URL they
were referred from will be provided in this panel. See `--ignore-
panel` in your configuration file to enable it. disabled by de-
fault.
Referring Sites
This panel will display only the host part but not the whole URL.
The URL where the request came from.
Keyphrases
It reports keyphrases used on Google search, Google cache, and
Google translate that have lead to your web server. At present,
it only supports Google search queries via HTTP. See `--ignore-
panel` in your configuration file to enable it. disabled by de-
fault.
Geo Location
Determines where an IP address is geographically located. Statis-
tics are broken down by continent and country. It needs to be
compiled with GeoLocation support.
HTTP Status Codes
The values of the numeric status code to HTTP requests.
ASN This panel displays ASN (Autonomous System Numbers) data for
GeoIP2 and legacy databases. Great for detecting malicious traf-
fic and blocking accordingly.
Remote User (HTTP authentication)
This is the userid of the person requesting the document as de-
termined by HTTP authentication. If the document is not password
protected, this part will be "-" just like the previous one. This
panel is not enabled unless %e is given within the log-format
variable.
Cache Status
If you are using caching on your server, you may be at the point
where you want to know if your request is being cached and served
from the cache. This panel shows the cache status of the object
the server served. This panel is not enabled unless %C is given
within the log-format variable. The status can be either
`MISS`, `BYPASS`, `EXPIRED`, `STALE`, `UPDATING`, `REVALIDATED`
or `HIT`
MIME Types
This panel specifies Media Types (formerly known as MIME types)
and Media Subtypes which will be assigned and listed underneath.
This panel is not enabled unless %M is given within the log-for-
mat variable. See https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-
types/media-types.xhtml for more details.
Encryption Settings
This panel shows the SSL/TLS protocol used along the Cipher
Suites. This panel is not enabled unless %K is given within the
log-format variable.
NOTE: Optionally and if configured, all panels can display the average
time taken to serve the request.
STORAGE
There are three storage options that can be used with GoAccess. Choosing
one will depend on your environment and needs.
Default Hash Tables
In-memory storage provides better performance at the cost of lim-
iting the dataset size to the amount of available physical mem-
ory. GoAccess uses in-memory hash tables. It has very good memory
usage and pretty good performance. This storage has support for
on-disk persistence.
CONFIGURATION
Multiple options can be used to configure GoAccess. For a complete up-
to-date list of configure options, run ./configure --help
--enable-debug
Compile with debugging symbols and turn off compiler optimiza-
tions.
--enable-utf8
Compile with wide character support. Ncursesw is required.
--enable-geoip=<legacy|mmdb>
Compile with GeoLocation support. MaxMind's GeoIP is required.
legacy will utilize the original GeoIP databases. mmdb will uti-
lize the enhanced GeoIP2 databases.
--with-getline
Dynamically expands line buffer in order to parse full line re-
quests instead of using a fixed size buffer of 4096.
--with-openssl
Compile GoAccess with OpenSSL support for its WebSocket server.
OPTIONS
The following options 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 -- and without using the equal sign
=.
LOG/DATE/TIME FORMAT
--time-format=<timeformat>
The time-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log
format time containing either a name of a predefined format (see
options below) or any combination of regular characters and spe-
cial format specifiers.
They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`.
%T or %H:%M:%S.
Note that if a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be
used as time-format. If the timestamp is given in milliseconds
%* must be used as time-format.
--date-format=<dateformat>
The date-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log
format time containing either a name of a predefined format (see
options below) or any combination of regular characters and spe-
cial format specifiers.
They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`.
%Y-%m-%d.
Note that if a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be
used as date-format. If the timestamp is given in milliseconds
%* must be used as date-format.
--datetime-format=<date_time_format>
The date and time format combines the two variables into a single
option. This gives the ability to get the timezone from a request
and convert it to another timezone for output. See --tz=<time-
zone>
They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`.
e.g., %d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z.
Note that if --datetime-format is used, %x must be passed in the
log-format variable to represent the date and time field.
--log-format=<logformat>
The log-format variable followed by a space or \t for tab-delim-
ited, specifies the log format string.
Note that if there are spaces within the format, the string needs
to be enclosed in single/double quotes. Inner quotes need to be
escaped.
In addition to specifying the raw log/date/time formats, for sim-
plicity, any of the following predefined log format names can be
supplied to the log/date/time-format variables. GoAccess can also
handle one predefined name in one variable and another predefined
name in another variable.
COMBINED - Combined Log Format,
VCOMBINED - Combined Log Format with Virtual Host,
COMMON - Common Log Format,
VCOMMON - Common Log Format with Virtual Host,
W3C - W3C Extended Log File Format,
SQUID - Native Squid Log Format,
CLOUDFRONT - Amazon CloudFront Web Distribution,
CLOUDSTORAGE - Google Cloud Storage,
AWSELB - Amazon Elastic Load Balancing,
AWSS3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
AWSALB - Amazon Application Load Balancer
CADDY - Caddy's JSON Structured format (local/info for-
mat)
TRAEFIKCLF - Traefik's CLF flavor
Note: Generally, you need quotes around values that include white
spaces, commas, pipes, quotes, and/or brackets. Inner quotes must
be escaped.
Note: Piping data into GoAccess won't prompt a log/date/time con-
figuration dialog, you will need to previously define it in your
configuration file or in the command line.
Note: The default GoAccess format for CADDY is the 'local/info'
format. Nevertheless, if needed, you have the option to utilize a
custom GoAccess log format to match your particular configura-
tion.
USER INTERFACE OPTIONS
-c --config-dialog
Prompt log/time/date configuration window on program start. Only
when curses is initialized.
-i --hl-header
Color highlight active terminal panel.
-m --with-mouse
Enable mouse support on main terminal dashboard.
---color=<fg:bg[attrs, PANEL]>
Specify custom colors for the terminal output.
Color Syntax
DEFINITION space/tab colorFG#:colorBG# [attributes,PANEL]
FG# = foreground color [-1...255] (-1 = default term color)
BG# = background color [-1...255] (-1 = default term color)
Optionally, it is possible to apply color attributes (multiple
attributes are comma separated), such as: bold, underline, nor-
mal, reverse, blink
If desired, it is possible to apply custom colors per panel, that
is, a metric in the REQUESTS panel can be of color A, while the
same metric in the BROWSERS panel can be of color B.
Available color definitions:
COLOR_MTRC_HITS
COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS
COLOR_MTRC_DATA
COLOR_MTRC_BW
COLOR_MTRC_AVGTS
COLOR_MTRC_CUMTS
COLOR_MTRC_MAXTS
COLOR_MTRC_PROT
COLOR_MTRC_MTHD
COLOR_MTRC_HITS_PERC
COLOR_MTRC_HITS_PERC_MAX
COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS_PERC
COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS_PERC_MAX
COLOR_PANEL_COLS
COLOR_BARS
COLOR_ERROR
COLOR_SELECTED
COLOR_PANEL_ACTIVE
COLOR_PANEL_HEADER
COLOR_PANEL_DESC
COLOR_OVERALL_LBLS
COLOR_OVERALL_VALS
COLOR_OVERALL_PATH
COLOR_ACTIVE_LABEL
COLOR_BG
COLOR_DEFAULT
COLOR_PROGRESS
See configuration file for a sample color scheme.
--color-scheme=<1|2|3>
Choose among color schemes. 1 for the default grey scheme. 2
for the green scheme. 3 for the Monokai scheme (shown only if
terminal supports 256 colors).
--crawlers-only
Parse and display only crawlers (bots).
--html-custom-css=<path/custom.css>
Specifies a custom CSS file path to load in the HTML report.
--html-custom-js=<path/custom.js>
Specifies a custom JS file path to load in the HTML report.
--html-report-title=<title>
Set HTML report page title and header.
--html-refresh=<secs>
Refresh the HTML report every X seconds. The value has to be be-
tween 1 and 60 seconds. The default is set to refresh the HTML
report every 1 second.
--html-prefs=<JSON>
Set HTML report default preferences. Supply a valid JSON object
containing the HTML preferences. It allows the ability to cus-
tomize each panel plot. See example below.
Note: The JSON object passed needs to be a one line JSON string.
For instance,
--html-prefs='{"theme":"bright","perPage":5,"layout":"horizontal","showTables":true,"visitors":{"plot":{"chartType":"bar"}}}'
--json-pretty-print
Format JSON output using tabs and newlines.
Note: This is not recommended when outputting a real-time HTML
report since the WebSocket payload will much much larger.
--max-items=<number>
The maximum number of items to display per panel. The maximum can
be a number between 1 and n.
Note: Only the CSV and JSON output allow a maximum number greater
than the default value of 366 (or 50 in the real-time HTML out-
put) items per panel.
--no-color
Turn off colored output. This is the default output on terminals
that do not support colors.
--no-column-names
Don't write column names in the terminal output. By default, it
displays column names for each available metric in every panel.
--no-csv-summary
Disable summary metrics on the CSV output.
--no-progress
Disable progress metrics [total requests/requests per second].
--no-tab-scroll
Disable scrolling through panels when TAB is pressed or when a
panel is selected using a numeric key.
--no-html-last-updated
Do not show the last updated field displayed in the HTML gener-
ated report.
--no-parsing-spinner
Do now show the progress metrics and parsing spinner.
--tz=<timezone>
Outputs the report date/time data in the given timezone. Note
that it uses the canonical timezone name. e.g., Europe/Berlin or
America/Chicago or Africa/Cairo If an invalid timezone name is
given, the output will be in GMT. See --datetime-format in order
to properly specify a timezone in the date/time format.
SERVER OPTIONS
Note This is just a WebSocket server to provide the raw real-time data.
It is not a WebServer itself. To access your reports html file, you will
still need your own HTTP server, place the generated report in it's doc-
ument root dir and open the html file in your browser. The browser will
then open another WebSocket-connection to the ws-server you may setup
here, to keep the dashboard up-to-date.
--addr Specify IP address to bind the server to. Otherwise it binds to
0.0.0.0.
Usually there is no need to specify the address, unless you in-
tentionally would like to bind the server to a different address
within your server.
--daemonize
Run GoAccess as daemon (only if --real-time-html enabled).
Note: It's important to make use of absolute paths across GoAc-
cess' configuration.
--user-name=<username>
Run GoAccess as the specified user.
Note: It's important to ensure the user or the users' group can
access the input and output files as well as any other files
needed. Other groups the user belongs to will be ignored. As
such it's advised to run GoAccess behind a SSL proxy as it's un-
likely this user can access the SSL certificates.
--origin=<url>
Ensure clients send the specified origin header upon the Web-
Socket handshake.
--pid-file=<path/goaccess.pid>
Write the daemon PID to a file when used along the --daemonize
option.
--port=<port>
Specify the port to use. By default GoAccess' WebSocket server
listens on port 7890.
--real-time-html
Enable real-time HTML output.
GoAccess uses its own WebSocket server to push the data from the
server to the client. See http://gwsocket.io for more details how
the WebSocket server works.
--ws-url=<[scheme://]url[:port]>
URL to which the WebSocket server responds. This is the URL sup-
plied to the WebSocket constructor on the client side.
Optionally, it is possible to specify the WebSocket URI scheme,
such as ws:// or wss:// for unencrypted and encrypted connec-
tions. e.g., wss://goaccess.io
If GoAccess is running behind a proxy, you could set the client
side to connect to a different port by specifying the host fol-
lowed by a colon and the port. e.g., goaccess.io:9999
By default, it will attempt to connect to the generated report's
hostname. If GoAccess is running on a remote server, the host of
the remote server should be specified here. Also, make sure it is
a valid host and NOT an http address.
--ping-interval=<secs>
Enable WebSocket ping with specified interval in seconds. This
helps prevent idle connections getting disconnected.
--fifo-in=<path/file>
Creates a named pipe (FIFO) that reads from on the given
path/file.
--fifo-out=<path/file>
Creates a named pipe (FIFO) that writes to the given path/file.
--ssl-cert=<cert.crt>
Path to TLS/SSL certificate. In order to enable TLS/SSL support,
GoAccess requires that --ssl-cert and --ssl-key are used.
Only if configured using --with-openssl
--ssl-key=<priv.key>
Path to TLS/SSL private key. In order to enable TLS/SSL support,
GoAccess requires that --ssl-cert and --ssl-key are used.
Only if configured using --with-openssl
FILE OPTIONS
- The log file to parse is read from stdin.
-f --log-file=<logfile>
Specify the path to the input log file. If set in the config
file, it will take priority over -f from the command line.
-S --log-size=<bytes>
Specify the log size in bytes. This is useful when piping in logs
for processing in which the log size can be explicitly set.
-l --debug-file=<debugfile>
Send all debug messages to the specified file.
-p --config-file=<configfile>
Specify a custom configuration file to use. If set, it will take
priority over the global configuration file (if any).
--external-assets
Output HTML assets to external JS/CSS files. Great if you are
setting up Content Security Policy (CSP). This will create two
separate files, goaccess.js and goaccess.css , in the same direc-
tory as your report.html file.
--invalid-requests=<filename>
Log invalid requests to the specified file.
--unknowns-log=<filename>
Log unknown browsers and OSs to the specified file.
--no-global-config
Do not load the global configuration file. This directory should
normally be /usr/local/etc, unless specified with
--sysconfdir=/dir. See --dcf option for finding the default con-
figuration file.
PARSE OPTIONS
-a --agent-list
Enable a list of user-agents by host. For faster parsing, do not
enable this flag.
-d --with-output-resolver
Enable IP resolver on HTML|JSON output.
-e --exclude-ip=<IP|IP-range>
Exclude an IPv4 or IPv6 from being counted. Applicable solely
during access log data processing, it does not exclude persisted
data. Ranges can be included as well using a dash in between the
IPs (start-end).
Examples:
exclude-ip 127.0.0.1
exclude-ip 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.100
exclude-ip ::1
exclude-ip 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:808:804-0:0:0:0:0:ffff:808:808
-j --jobs=<1-6>
This specifies the number of parallel processing threads to be
used during the execution of the program. It determines the de-
gree of concurrency when analyzing log data, allowing for paral-
lel processing of multiple tasks simultaneously. It defaults to 1
thread. It's common to set the number of jobs based on the avail-
able hardware resources, such as the number of CPU cores.
-H --http-protocol=<yes|no>
Set/unset HTTP request protocol. This will create a request key
containing the request protocol + the actual request.
-M --http-method=<yes|no>
Set/unset HTTP request method. This will create a request key
containing the request method + the actual request.
-o --output=<path/file.[json|csv|html]>
Write output to stdout given one of the following files and the
corresponding extension for the output format:
/path/file.csv - Comma-separated values (CSV)
/path/file.json - JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
/path/file.html - HTML
-q --no-query-string
Ignore request's query string. i.e.,
www.google.com/page.htm?query => www.google.com/page.htm.
Note: Removing the query string can greatly decrease memory con-
sumption, especially on timestamped requests.
-r --no-term-resolver
Disable IP resolver on terminal output.
--444-as-404
Treat non-standard status code 444 as 404.
--4xx-to-unique-count
Add 4xx client errors to the unique visitors count.
--anonymize-ip
Anonymize the client IP address. The IP anonymization option sets
the last octet of IPv4 user IP addresses and the last 80 bits of
IPv6 addresses to zeros. e.g., 192.168.20.100 => 192.168.20.0
e.g., 2a03:2880:2110:df07:face:b00c::1 => 2a03:2880:2110:df07::
Note: This deactivates -a.
--chunk-size=<256-32768>
This determines the number of lines that form a chunk. This para-
meter influences the size of the data processed concurrently by
each thread, allowing for parallelization of the file reading and
processing tasks. The value of chunk-size affects the efficiency
of the parallel processing and can be adjusted based on factors
such as system resources and the characteristics of the input
data.
Low Values: If chunk-size is set too low, it might result in in-
efficient processing. For instance, if each chunk contains a very
small number of lines, the overhead of managing and coordinating
parallel processing might outweigh the benefits.
Large Values: Conversely, if chunk-size is set too high, it could
lead to resource exhaustion. Each chunk represents a portion of
data that a thread processes in parallel. Setting chunk-size to
an excessively large value might cause memory issues, particu-
larly if there are many parallel threads running simultaneously.
--anonymize-level
Specifies the anonymization levels: 1 => default, 2 => strong, 3
=> pedantic.
┌─────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┐
│ Bits-hidden │ Level 1 │ Level 2 │ Level 3 │
├─────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ IPv4 │ 8 │ 16 │ 24 │
├─────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┤
│ IPv6 │ 64 │ 80 │ 96 │
└─────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┘
--all-static-files
Include static files that contain a query string. e.g.,
/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=4.0.3
--browsers-file=<path>
By default GoAccess parses an "essential/basic" curated list of
browsers & crawlers. If you need to add additional browsers, use
this option. Include an additional delimited list of
browsers/crawlers/feeds etc. See config/browsers.list for an ex-
ample or https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allinurl/goaccess/mas-
ter/config/browsers.list
--date-spec=<date|hr|min>
Set the date specificity to either date (default), hr to display
hours or min to display minutes appended to the date.
This is used in the visitors panel. It's useful for tracking vis-
itors at the hour level. For instance, an hour specificity would
yield to display traffic as 18/Dec/2010:19 or minute specificity
18/Dec/2010:19:59.
--double-decode
Decode double-encoded values. This includes, user-agent, request,
and referrer.
--enable-panel=<PANEL>
Enable parsing and displaying the given panel.
Available panels:
VISITORS
REQUESTS
REQUESTS_STATIC
NOT_FOUND
HOSTS
OS
BROWSERS
VISIT_TIMES
VIRTUAL_HOSTS
REFERRERS
REFERRING_SITES
KEYPHRASES
STATUS_CODES
REMOTE_USER
CACHE_STATUS
GEO_LOCATION
MIME_TYPE
TLS_TYPE
--fname-as-vhost=<regex>
Use log filename(s) as virtual host(s). POSIX regex is passed to
extract the virtual host from the filename. e.g., --fname-as-
vhost='[a-z]*.[a-z]*' can be used to extract awesome.com.log =>
awesome.com.
--hide-referrer=<NEEDLE>
Hide a referrer but still count it. Wild cards are allowed in the
needle. i.e., *.bing.com.
--hour-spec=<hr|min>
Set the time specificity to either hour (default) or min to dis-
play the tenth of an hour appended to the hour.
This is used in the time distribution panel. It's useful for
tracking peaks of traffic on your server at specific times.
--ignore-crawlers
Ignore crawlers from being counted.
--unknowns-as-crawlers
Classify unknown OS and browsers as crawlers.
--ignore-panel=<PANEL>
Ignore parsing and displaying the given panel.
Available panels:
VISITORS
REQUESTS
REQUESTS_STATIC
NOT_FOUND
HOSTS
OS
BROWSERS
VISIT_TIMES
VIRTUAL_HOSTS
REFERRERS
REFERRING_SITES
KEYPHRASES
STATUS_CODES
REMOTE_USER
CACHE_STATUS
GEO_LOCATION
MIME_TYPE
TLS_TYPE
--ignore-referrer=<referrer>
Ignore referrers from being counted. Wildcards allowed. e.g.,
*.domain.com ww?.domain.*
--ignore-statics=<req|panel>
Ignore static file requests.
req
Only ignore request from valid requests
panels
Ignore request from panels.
Note that it will count them towards the total number of re-
quests
--ignore-status=<CODE>
Ignore parsing and displaying one or multiple status code(s). For
multiple status codes, use this option multiple times.
--keep-last=<num_days>
Keep the last specified number of days in storage. This will re-
cycle the storage tables. e.g., keep & show only the last 7 days.
--no-ip-validation
Disable client IP validation. Useful if IP addresses have been
obfuscated before being logged. The log still needs to contain a
placeholder for %h usually it's a resolved IP. e.g. ord37s19-in-
f14.1e100.net.
--no-strict-status
Disable HTTP status code validation. Some servers would record
this value only if a connection was established to the target and
the target sent a response. Otherwise, it could be recorded as
-.
--num-tests=<number>
Number of lines from the access log to test against the provided
log/date/time format. By default, the parser is set to test 10
lines. If set to 0, the parser won't test any lines and will
parse the whole access log. If a line matches the given
log/date/time format before it reaches <number>, the parser will
consider the log to be valid, otherwise GoAccess will return
EXIT_FAILURE and display the relevant error messages.
--process-and-exit
Parse log and exit without outputting data. Useful if we are
looking to only add new data to the on-disk database without out-
putting to a file or a terminal.
--real-os
Display real OS names. e.g, Windows XP, Snow Leopard.
--sort-panel=<PANEL,FIELD,ORDER>
Sort panel on initial load. Sort options are separated by comma.
Options are in the form: PANEL,METRIC,ORDER
Available metrics:
BY_HITS - Sort by hits
BY_VISITORS - Sort by unique visitors
BY_DATA - Sort by data
BY_BW - Sort by bandwidth
BY_AVGTS - Sort by average time served
BY_CUMTS - Sort by cumulative time served
BY_MAXTS - Sort by maximum time served
BY_PROT - Sort by http protocol
BY_MTHD - Sort by http method
Available orders:
ASC
DESC
--static-file=<extension>
Add static file extension. e.g.: .mp3 Extensions are case sensi-
tive.
GEOLOCATION OPTIONS
-g --std-geoip
Standard GeoIP database for less memory usage.
--geoip-database=<geofile>
Specify path to GeoIP database file. i.e., GeoLiteCity.dat.
If using GeoIP2, you will need to download the GeoLite2 City or
Country database from MaxMind.com and use the option --geoip-
database to specify the database. You can also get updated data-
base files for GeoIP legacy, you can find these as GeoLite Legacy
Databases from MaxMind.com. IPv4 and IPv6 files are supported as
well. For updated DB URLs, please see the default GoAccess con-
figuration file.
Note: --geoip-city-data is an alias of --geoip-database.
OTHER OPTIONS
-h --help
The help.
-s --storage
Display current storage method. i.e., B+ Tree, Hash.
-V --version
Display version information and exit.
--dcf Display the path of the default config file when `-p` is not
used.
PERSISTENCE STORAGE OPTIONS
--persist
Persist parsed data into disk. If database files exist, files
will be overwritten. This should be set to the first dataset. See
examples below.
--restore
Load previously stored data from disk. If reading persisted data
only, the database files need to exist. See --persist and exam-
ples below.
--db-path=<dir>
Path where the on-disk database files are stored. The default
value is the /tmp directory.
CUSTOM LOG/DATE FORMAT
GoAccess can parse virtually any web log format.
Predefined options include, Common Log Format (CLF), Combined Log Format
(XLF/ELF), including virtual host, Amazon CloudFront (Download Distribu-
tion), Google Cloud Storage and W3C format (IIS).
GoAccess allows any custom format string as well.
There are two ways to configure the log format. The easiest is to run
GoAccess with -c to prompt a configuration window. Otherwise, it can be
configured under ~/.goaccessrc or the %sysconfdir%.
time-format
The time-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log
format time containing any combination of regular characters and
special format specifiers. They all begin with a percentage (%)
sign. See `man strftime`. %T or %H:%M:%S.
Note: If a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as
time-format or %* if the timestamp is given in milliseconds.
date-format
The date-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log
format date containing any combination of regular characters and
special format specifiers. They all begin with a percentage (%)
sign. See `man strftime`. e.g., %Y-%m-%d.
Note: If a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as
date-format or %* if the timestamp is given in milliseconds.
log-format
The log-format variable followed by a space or \t , specifies the
log format string.
%x A date and time field matching the time-format and date-format
variables. This is used when given a timestamp or the date & time
are concatenated as a single string (e.g., 1501647332 or
20170801235000) instead of the date and time being in two sepa-
rated variables.
%t time field matching the time-format variable.
%d date field matching the date-format variable.
%v The canonical Server Name of the server serving the request (Vir-
tual Host).
%e This is the userid of the person requesting the document as de-
termined by HTTP authentication.
%C The cache status of the object the server served.
%h host (the client IP address, either IPv4 or IPv6)
%r The request line from the client. This requires specific delim-
iters around the request (as single quotes, double quotes, or
anything else) to be parsable. If not, we have to use a combina-
tion of special format specifiers as %m %U %H.
%q The query string.
%m The request method.
%U The URL path requested.
Note: If the query string is in %U, there is no need to use %q.
However, if the URL path, does not include any query string, you
may use %q and the query string will be appended to the request.
%H The request protocol.
%s The status code that the server sends back to the client.
%b The size of the object returned to the client.
%R The "Referrer" HTTP request header.
%u The user-agent HTTP request header.
%K The TLS encryption settings chosen for the connection. (In Apache
LogFormat: %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x)
%k The TLS encryption settings chosen for the connection. (In Apache
LogFormat: %{SSL_CIPHER}x)
%M The MIME-type of the requested resource. (In Apache LogFormat:
%{Content-Type}o)
%D The time taken to serve the request, in microseconds as a decimal
number.
%T The time taken to serve the request, in seconds with milliseconds
resolution.
%L The time taken to serve the request, in milliseconds as a decimal
number.
%n The time taken to serve the request, in nanoseconds.
%^ Ignore this field.
%~ Move forward through the log string until a non-space (!isspace)
char is found.
~h The host (the client IP address, either IPv4 or IPv6) in a X-For-
warded-For (XFF) field.
It uses a special specifier which consists of a tilde before the
host specifier, followed by the character(s) that delimit the XFF
field, which are enclosed by curly braces. i.e., "~h{, }
For example, "~h{, }" is used in order to parse "11.25.11.53,
17.68.33.17" field which is delimited by a comma and a space (en-
closed by double quotes).
┌────────────────────────────┬───────────┐
│ XFF field │ specifier │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ "192.1.192.68.33192.1.1.2" │ "~h{, }" │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ "192.1.2.12""192.68.33.17" │ ~h{", } │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ 192.1.2.12, 192.68.33.17 │ ~h{, } │
├────────────────────────────┼───────────┤
│ 192.1.2192.68.33.192.1.1.2 │ ~h{ } │
└────────────────────────────┴───────────┘
Note: In order to get the average, cumulative and maximum time served in
GoAccess, you will need to start logging response times in your web
server. In Nginx you can add $request_time to your log format, or %D in
Apache.
Important: If multiple time served specifiers are used at the same time,
the first option specified in the format string will take priority over
the other specifiers.
GoAccess requires the following fields:
%h a valid IPv4/6
%d a valid date
%r the request
INTERACTIVE MENU
F1 or h
Main help.
F5 Redraw main window.
q Quit the program, current window or collapse active module
o or ENTER
Expand selected module or open window
0-9 and Shift + 0
Set selected module to active
j Scroll down within expanded module
k Scroll up within expanded module
c Set or change scheme color.
TAB Forward iteration of modules. Starts from current active module.
SHIFT + TAB
Backward iteration of modules. Starts from current active module.
^f Scroll forward one screen within an active module.
^b Scroll backward one screen within an active module.
s Sort options for active module
/ Search across all modules (regex allowed)
n Find the position of the next occurrence across all modules.
g Move to the first item or top of screen.
G Move to the last item or bottom of screen.
EXAMPLES
Note: Piping data into GoAccess won't prompt a log/date/time configura-
tion dialog, you will need to previously define it in your configuration
file or in the command line.
DIFFERENT OUTPUTS
To output to a terminal and generate an interactive report:
# goaccess access.log
To generate an HTML report:
# goaccess access.log -a -o report.html
To generate a JSON report:
# goaccess access.log -a -d -o report.json
To generate a CSV file:
# goaccess access.log --no-csv-summary -o report.csv
GoAccess also allows great flexibility for real-time filtering and pars-
ing. 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' | goac-
cess --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 --log-format=COMBINED -o report.html --real-time-html -
or to convert the log date timezone to a different timezone, e.g., Eu-
rope/Berlin
# goaccess access.log --log-format='%h %^[%x] "%r" %s %b "%R"
"%u"' --datetime-format='%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z' --tz=Europe/Berlin
--date-spec=min
MULTIPLE LOG FILES
There are several ways to parse multiple logs with GoAccess. The sim-
plest 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 that the single dash is appended to the command line to let GoAc-
cess know that it should read from the pipe.
Now if we want to add more flexibility to GoAccess, we can do a series
of pipes. For instance, if we would like to process all compressed log
files access.log.*.gz in addition to the current log file, we can do:
# zcat access.log.*.gz | goaccess access.log -
Note: On Mac OS X, use gunzip -c instead of zcat.
REAL TIME HTML OUTPUT
GoAccess has the ability to 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/site/report.html
--real-time-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 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=<cert.crt> and --ssl-key=<priv.key>.
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 '/05Dec2010/,$ 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 '/5Nov2010/,/5Dec2010/ 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 (server blocks) field. For
instance:
vhost.com:80 10.131.40.139 - - [02/Mar/2016:08:14:04 -0600] "GET
/shop/bag-p-20 HTTP/1.1" 200 6715 "-" "Apache (internal dummy
connection)"
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 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
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 -
SERVER
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.
INCREMENTAL LOG PROCESSING
GoAccess has the ability to process logs incrementally through its in-
ternal 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 snip-
pet of data from the log along with the last line parsed of each file
and the timestamp of the last line parsed. e.g., in-
ode: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 dramatically, 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 remain-
ing 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 in-
stance, it will parse and discard all incoming entries until it finds a
timestamp >= than the one stored.
For instance:
// 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
NOTES
Each active panel has a total of 366 items or 50 in the real-time HTML
report. The number of items is customizable using max-items Note that
HTML, CSV and JSON output allow a maximum number greater than the de-
fault value of 366 items per panel.
A hit is a request (line in the access log), e.g., 10 requests = 10
hits. HTTP requests with the same IP, date, and user agent are consid-
ered a unique visit.
If you want to enable dual-stack support, please use --addr=:: instead
of the default --addr=0.0.0.0.
The generated report will attempt to reconnect to the WebSocket server
after 1 second with exponential backoff. It will attempt to connect 20
times.
BUGS
If you think you have found a bug, please send me an email to goac-
cess@prosoftcorp.com or use the issue tracker in
https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues
AUTHOR
Gerardo Orellana <hello@goaccess.io> For more details about it, or new
releases, please visit https://goaccess.io
GNU+Linux MAY 2024 goaccess(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Wed Feb 4 05:48:11 CET 2026.