Apache Multiple Logs

Multiple Access Logs

Multiple access logs can be created simply by specifying multiple CustomLog directives in the configuration file. For example, the following directives will create three access logs. The first contains the basic CLF information, while the second and third contain referer and browser information. The last two CustomLog lines show how to mimic the effects of the ReferLog and AgentLog directives.

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common
CustomLog logs/access_log common
CustomLog logs/referer_log "%{Referer}i -> %U"
CustomLog logs/agent_log "%{User-agent}i"

This example also shows that it is not necessary to define a nickname with the LogFormat directive. Instead, the log format can be specified directly in the CustomLog directive.

Conditional Logs

There are times when it is convenient to exclude certain entries from the access logs based on characteristics of the client request. This is easily accomplished with the help of environment variables. First, an environment variable must be set to indicate that the request meets certain conditions. This is usually accomplished with SetEnvIf. Then the env= clause of the CustomLog directive is used to include or exclude requests where the environment variable is set. Some examples:

# Mark requests from the loop-back interface
SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "127\.0\.0\.1" dontlog
# Mark requests for the robots.txt file
SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/robots\.txt$" dontlog
# Log what remains
CustomLog logs/access_log common env=!dontlog

As another example, consider logging requests from english-speakers to one log file, and non-english speakers to a different log file.

SetEnvIf Accept-Language "en" english
CustomLog logs/english_log common env=english
CustomLog logs/non_english_log common env=!english

Although we have just shown that conditional logging is very powerful and flexible, it is not the only way to control the contents of the logs. Log files are more useful when they contain a complete record of server activity. It is often easier to simply post-process the log files to remove requests that you do not want to consider.