Installing a log parser

While NGINX has great logs, at some of the higher levels of logging, they can also be quite exhaustive in the amount of information they log. A good way to not miss information and get a high-level overview of what is going on with NGINX is to install a log parser that can aggregate information and display it in a more approachable format.

Note

One open source tool we can use for this is called GoAccess. More info can be found on its website at https://goaccess.io/.

The good thing about GoAccess, aside from being free and open source, is that it can be accessed through both the Terminal and your browser. Therefore, it can function as both a monitoring tool that you run in your Terminal and as a reporting tool that generates a kind of dashboard for your stats:

Figure 11.2: GoAccess analyzing and organizing Nginx logs for a clear view

To get started and install GoAccess, you can either check your distribution package manager...