Re: counters

Terra Goodnight (terra@clark.net)
Mon, 10 Jul 1995 15:53:01 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 10 Jul 1995 WLemke8503@aol.com wrote:

> I would like to set up a counter to keep track of how many people have
> visited my home page. I have seen others use this, and am wondering how it
> is done. Can you please let me know how to do this, or tell me where
> I can find this information?

Find the logs directory for your web server (usually for NCSA it is
/usr/local/etc/httpd/logs/) in it, you should find a file called
access_log which you can grep for the filename you wish to get access
stats for. For instance, if my files are all in the /terra directory at

grep /terra /usr/local/etc/httpd/logs/access_log | more

(pipe through more since there will be many screenfuls)

or

grep /terra /usr/local/etc/httpd/logs/access_log > filename

(saves it as a file which is easier to dig through since the list is long).

usually the log file is massive and the grep will take a few minutes to
complete, so if it seems like it's hanging, just wait a bit and you'll
get your prompt back.

There are other CGI packages that will run and make a much
nicer output display, but they get their information from that same
logfile. One that I use is Matt Kruse's access.pl at
http://cs.sau.edu/util/access.html

-Terra