goaccess nginx

Introduction

GoAccess is an open-source web log analyzer and interactive viewer for Apache or Nginx server logs written in C. It provides real-time dashboards, detailed reports, and session histories for analyzing and monitoring web traffic. This article focuses on using GoAccess with Nginx to analyze web traffic in real-time and generate detailed reports.

Installation

GoAccess is available in the repositories of most Linux distributions. Therefore, you can install it using the package manager of your Linux distribution. For example, on Ubuntu, you can install GoAccess using the following command:
sudo apt-get install goaccess
However, for the latest version, you can download it from the official website and then compile and install it manually.

Configuration

Once you have installed GoAccess, the next step is to configure it to read the Nginx log files. By default, Nginx logs HTTP access to the file /var/log/nginx/access.log. Therefore, we need to configure GoAccess to read this file. You can do this by specifying the log file location using the –log-format and –log-file options. For example, to analyze the access.log file, use the following command:
goaccess -f /var/log/nginx/access.log -o /var/www/html/report.html
This command analyzes the Nginx access.log file and generates an HTML report in the path /var/www/html/report.html.

Real-time Monitoring

GoAccess can also be used for real-time monitoring of web traffic. To do this, we need to enable the Nginx status module. The status module provides detailed information about the current state of the Nginx server, including the number of active connections, requests per second, etc. To enable the status module, add the following lines to your Nginx configuration file:
location /nginx_status { stub_status on; access_log off; allow 127.0.0.1; deny all;}
Once the status module is enabled, you can use the following command to monitor Nginx web traffic:
goaccess -f /var/log/nginx/access.log --real-time-html -o /var/www/html/report.html
This command generates a real-time HTML report in the path /var/www/html/report.html that updates every second.

Conclusion

GoAccess is a powerful web log analyzer that provides real-time dashboards and detailed reports for analyzing and monitoring web traffic. It is also very easy to install and use with Nginx. By using GoAccess, you can gain valuable insights into your web traffic and improve the performance and user experience of your website.
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