Log file analyzers

In the previous chapter, we learned about Squid's access log file where every client request is logged unless configured otherwise. Over a period of time, it's not possible to evaluate this file manually as it may contain tens of thousands or even millions of entries. To parse and analyze this file, there are a lot of open source and free third party programs available. A list of these programs can be accessed at http://www.squid-cache.org/Scripts/.

In this book, we'll have a look at Calamaris, which is a Perl (http://www.perl.org/) based log fine analyzer and statistics generator. So, let's have a look at Calamaris.

Calamaris

Calamaris is a Perl-based script that can analyze Squid's access log files and generate interesting statistics about the usage and performance of the proxy server. The following are a few of the types reports that Calamaris can produce:

• A brief summary of the requests, clients served, bandwidth used, plus statistics about cache hits and hit rate

• Incoming...