goaccess(1)

NAME
goaccess - fast web log analyzer and interactive viewer.

SYNOPSIS

goaccess [filename] [options...] [-c][-M][-H][-q][-d][...]

DESCRIPTION
goaccess is an open source, real-time log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal on *nix systems or directly in your browser. Designed with system administrators, DevOps engineers, and security professionals in mind, it delivers fast, actionable HTTP statistics and visual server reports on the fly. GoAccess parses your web server logs in real time and presents the data directly in the terminal or via a live HTML dashboard, making it easy to monitor traffic, detect anomalies, and troubleshoot issues instantly.

General Statistics:
    This panel gives a summary of several metrics, such as the number of valid and invalid requests, time taken to analyze the dataset, unique visitors, requested files, static files (CSS, ICO, JPG, etc) HTTP referrers, 404s, size of the parsed log file and bandwidth consumption.

Unique visitors
    This panel shows metrics such as hits, unique visitors and cumulative bandwidth per date. HTTP requests containing the same IP, the same date, and the same user agent are considered a unique visitor. By default, it includes web crawlers/spiders.

    Optionally, date specificity can be set to the hour level using --date-spec=hr which will display dates such as 05/Jun/2016:16, or to the minute level producing 05/Jun/2016:16:59. This is great if you want to track your daily traffic at the hour or minute level.

Requested files
    This panel displays the most requested (non-static) files on your web server. It shows hits, unique visitors, and percentage, along with the cumulative bandwidth, protocol, and the request method used.

Requested static files
    Lists the most frequently static files such as: JPG, CSS, SWF, JS, GIF, and PNG file types, along with the same metrics as the last panel. Additional static files can be added to the configuration file.

404 or Not Found
    Displays the same metrics as the previous request panels, however, its data contains all pages that were not found on the server, or commonly known as 404 status code.

Hosts
    This panel has detailed information on the hosts themselves. This is great for spotting aggressive crawlers and identifying who's eating your bandwidth.

    Expanding the panel can display more information such as host's reverse DNS lookup result, country of origin and city. If the -a argument is enabled, a list of user agents can be displayed by selecting the desired IP address, and then pressing ENTER.

Operating Systems
    This panel will report which operating system the host used when it hit the server. It attempts to provide the most specific version of each operating system.

Browsers
    This panel will report which browser the host used when it hit the server. It attempts to provide the most specific version of each browser.

Visit Times
    This panel will display an hourly report. This option displays 24 data points, one for each hour of the day.

    Optionally, hour specificity can be set to the tenth of an hour level using --hour-spec=min which will display hours as 16:4 This is great if you want to spot peaks of traffic on your server.

Virtual Hosts
    This panel will display all the different virtual hosts parsed from the access log. This panel is displayed if %v is used within the log-format string.

Referrers URLs
    If the host in question accessed the site via another resource, or was linked/diverted to you from another host, the URL they were referred from will be provided in this panel. See `--ignore-panel` in your configuration file to enable it. disabled by default.

Referring Sites
    This panel will display only the host part but not the whole URL. The URL where the request came from.

Keyphrases
    It reports keyphrases used on Google search, Google cache, and Google translate that have lead to your web server. At present, it only supports Google search queries via HTTP. See `--ignore-panel` in your configuration file to enable it. disabled by default.

Geo Location
    Determines where an IP address is geographically located. Statistics are broken down by continent and country, and when city-level GeoIP data is available it also lists the individual cities for each hit. It needs to be compiled with GeoLocation support.

HTTP Status Codes
    The values of the numeric status code to HTTP requests.

ASN This panel displays ASN (Autonomous System Numbers) data for GeoIP2 and legacy databases. Great for detecting malicious traffic and blocking accordingly.

Remote User (HTTP authentication)
    This is the userid of the person requesting the document as determined by HTTP authentication. If the document is not password protected, this part will be "-" just like the previous one. This panel is not enabled unless %e is given within the log-format variable.

Cache Status
    If you are using caching on your server, you may be at the point where you want to know if your request is being cached and served from the cache. This panel shows the cache status of the object the server served. This panel is not enabled unless %C is given within the log-format variable. The status can be either
     `MISS`, `BYPASS`, `EXPIRED`, `STALE`, `UPDATING`, `REVALIDATED` or `HIT`

MIME Types
    This panel specifies Media Types (formerly known as MIME types) and Media Subtypes which will be assigned and listed underneath. This panel is not enabled unless %M is given within the log-format variable. See https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml for more details.

Encryption Settings
    This panel shows the SSL/TLS protocol used along the Cipher Suites. This panel is not enabled unless %K is given within the log-format variable.

GoAccess panels can be reordered and their subitems expanded or collapsed from the terminal interface, keeping the most important metrics front and center. Chart metrics and scales are also adjustable on the fly via the interactive menu described below.

NOTE: Optionally and if configured, all panels can display the average time taken to serve the request.

STORAGE

There are three storage options that can be used with GoAccess. Choosing one will depend on your environment and needs.

Default Hash Tables
    In-memory storage provides better performance at the cost of limiting the dataset size to the amount of available physical memory. GoAccess uses in-memory hash tables. It has very good memory usage and pretty good performance. This storage has support for on-disk persistence.

CONFIGURATION

Multiple options can be used to configure GoAccess. For a complete up-to-date list of configure options, run ./configure --help

--enable-debug
    Compile with debugging symbols and turn off compiler optimizations.

--enable-utf8
    Compile with wide character support. Ncursesw is required.

--enable-geoip=<legacy|mmdb>
    Compile with GeoLocation support. MaxMind's GeoIP is required. legacy will utilize the original GeoIP databases. mmdb will utilize the enhanced GeoIP2 databases.

--with-getline
    Dynamically expands line buffer in order to parse full line requests instead of using a fixed size buffer of 4096.

--with-zlib
    Build with zlib support for reading gzipped logs. Disabled by default.

--with-openssl
    Compile GoAccess with OpenSSL support for its WebSocket server. --with-zlib Enables optional zlib support to allow parsing of compressed log files (e.g., .gz) directly without manual decompression.

OPTIONS

The following options can be supplied to the command or specified in the configuration file. If specified in the configuration file, long options need to be used without prepending -- and without using the equal sign =.

  LOG/DATE/TIME FORMAT

--time-format=<timeformat>
    The time-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log format time containing either a name of a predefined format (see options below) or any combination of regular characters and special format specifiers.

    They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`. %T or %H:%M:%S.

    Note that if a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as time-format. If the timestamp is given in milliseconds %* must be used as time-format.

--date-format=<dateformat>
    The date-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log format time containing either a name of a predefined format (see options below) or any combination of regular characters and special format specifiers.

    They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`. %Y-%m-%d.

    Note that if a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as date-format. If the timestamp is given in milliseconds %* must be used as date-format.

--datetime-format=<date_time_format>
    The date and time format combines the two variables into a single option. This gives the ability to get the timezone from a request and convert it to another timezone for output. See --tz=<timezone>

    They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`. e.g., %d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z.

    Note that if --datetime-format is used, %x must be passed in the log-format variable to represent the date and time field.

--log-format=<logformat>
    The log-format variable followed by a space or \\t for tab-delimited, specifies the log format string.

    Note that if there are spaces within the format, the string needs to be enclosed in single/double quotes. Inner quotes need to be escaped.

    In addition to specifying the raw log/date/time formats, for simplicity, any of the following predefined log format names can be supplied to the log/date/time-format variables. GoAccess can also handle one predefined name in one variable and another predefined name in another variable.

      COMBINED - Combined Log Format,
      VCOMBINED - Combined Log Format with Virtual Host,
      COMMON - Common Log Format,
      VCOMMON - Common Log Format with Virtual Host,
      W3C - W3C Extended Log File Format,
      SQUID - Native Squid Log Format,
      CLOUDFRONT - Amazon CloudFront Web Distribution,
      CLOUDSTORAGE - Google Cloud Storage,
      AWSELB - Amazon Elastic Load Balancing,
      AWSS3 - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
      AWSALB - Amazon Application Load Balancer
      CADDY - Caddy's JSON Structured format (local/info format)
      TRAEFIKCLF - Traefik's CLF flavor

    Note: Generally, you need quotes around values that include white spaces, commas, pipes, quotes, and/or brackets. Inner quotes must be escaped.

    Note: Piping data into GoAccess won't prompt a log/date/time configuration dialog, you will need to previously define it in your configuration file or in the command line.

    Note: The default GoAccess format for CADDY is the 'local/info' format. Nevertheless, if needed, you have the option to utilize a custom GoAccess log format to match your particular configuration.

  USER INTERFACE OPTIONS

-c --config-dialog
    Prompt log/time/date configuration window on program start. Only when curses is initialized.

-i --hl-header
    Color highlight active terminal panel.

-m --with-mouse
    Enable mouse support on main terminal dashboard.

---color=<fg:bg[attrs, PANEL]>
    Specify custom colors for the terminal output.

    Color Syntax
      DEFINITION space/tab colorFG#:colorBG# [attributes,PANEL]

     FG# = foreground color [-1...255] (-1 = default term color)
     BG# = background color [-1...255] (-1 = default term color)

    Optionally, it is possible to apply color attributes (multiple attributes are comma separated), such as: bold, underline, normal, reverse, blink

    If desired, it is possible to apply custom colors per panel, that is, a metric in the REQUESTS panel can be of color A, while the same metric in the BROWSERS panel can be of color B.

    Available color definitions:
      COLOR_MTRC_HITS
      COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS
      COLOR_MTRC_DATA
      COLOR_MTRC_BW
      COLOR_MTRC_AVGTS
      COLOR_MTRC_CUMTS
      COLOR_MTRC_MAXTS
      COLOR_MTRC_PROT
      COLOR_MTRC_MTHD
      COLOR_MTRC_HITS_PERC
      COLOR_MTRC_HITS_PERC_MAX
      COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS_PERC
      COLOR_MTRC_VISITORS_PERC_MAX
      COLOR_PANEL_COLS
      COLOR_BARS
      COLOR_ERROR
      COLOR_SELECTED
      COLOR_PANEL_ACTIVE
      COLOR_PANEL_HEADER
      COLOR_PANEL_DESC
      COLOR_OVERALL_LBLS
      COLOR_OVERALL_VALS
      COLOR_OVERALL_PATH
      COLOR_ACTIVE_LABEL
      COLOR_BG
      COLOR_DEFAULT
      COLOR_PROGRESS

    See configuration file for a sample color scheme.

--color-scheme=<1|2|3>
    Choose among color schemes. 1 for the default grey scheme. 2 for the green scheme. 3 for the Monokai scheme (shown only if terminal supports 256 colors).

--crawlers-only
    Parse and display only crawlers (bots).

--html-custom-css=<path/custom.css>
    Specifies a custom CSS file path to load in the HTML report.

--html-custom-js=<path/custom.js>
    Specifies a custom JS file path to load in the HTML report.

--html-report-title=<title>
    Set HTML report page title and header.

--html-refresh=<secs>
    Refresh the HTML report every X seconds. The value has to be between 1 and 60 seconds. The default is set to refresh the HTML report every 1 second.

--html-prefs=<JSON>
    Set HTML report default preferences. Supply a valid JSON object containing the HTML preferences. It allows the ability to customize each panel plot. See example below.

    Note: The JSON object passed needs to be a one line JSON string. For instance,

    --html-prefs='{"theme":"bright","perPage":5,"layout":"horizontal","showTables":true,"visitors":{"plot":{"chartType":"bar"}}}'

--json-pretty-print
    Format JSON output using tabs and newlines.

    Note: This is not recommended when outputting a real-time HTML report since the WebSocket payload will much much larger.

--max-items=<number>
    The maximum number of items to display per panel. The maximum can be a number between 1 and n.

    Note: Only the CSV and JSON output allow a maximum number greater than the default value of 366 (or 50 in the real-time HTML output) items per panel.

--no-color
    Turn off colored output. This is the default output on terminals that do not support colors.

--no-csv-summary
    Disable summary metrics on the CSV output.

--no-progress
    Disable progress metrics [total requests/requests per second].

--no-tab-scroll
    Disable scrolling through panels when TAB is pressed or when a panel is selected using a numeric key.

--no-html-last-updated
    Do not show the last updated field displayed in the HTML generated report.

--no-parsing-spinner
    Do now show the progress metrics and parsing spinner.

--tz=<timezone>
    Outputs the report date/time data in the given timezone. Note that it uses the canonical timezone name. e.g., Europe/Berlin or America/Chicago or Africa/Cairo If an invalid timezone name is given, the output will be in GMT. See --datetime-format in order to properly specify a timezone in the date/time format.

  SERVER OPTIONS

Note This is just a WebSocket server to provide the raw real-time data. It is not a WebServer itself. To access your reports html file, you will still need your own HTTP server, place the generated report in it's document root dir and open the html file in your browser. The browser will then open another WebSocket-connection to the ws-server you may setup here, to keep the dashboard up-to-date.

--addr
    Specify IP address to bind the server to. Otherwise it binds to 0.0.0.0.

    Usually there is no need to specify the address, unless you intentionally would like to bind the server to a different address within your server.

--daemonize
    Run GoAccess as daemon (only if --real-time-html enabled).

    Note: It's important to make use of absolute paths across GoAccess' configuration.

--user-name=<username>
    Run GoAccess as the specified user.

    Note: It's important to ensure the user or the users' group can access the input and output files as well as any other files needed. Other groups the user belongs to will be ignored. As such it's advised to run GoAccess behind a SSL proxy as it's unlikely this user can access the SSL certificates.

--origin=<url>
    Ensure clients send the specified origin header upon the WebSocket handshake.

--pid-file=<path/goaccess.pid>
    Write the daemon PID to a file when used along the --daemonize option.

--port=<port>
    Specify the port to use. By default GoAccess' WebSocket server listens on port 7890.

--real-time-html
    Enable real-time HTML output.

    GoAccess uses its own WebSocket server to push the data from the server to the client. See http://gwsocket.io for more details how the WebSocket server works.

--ws-auth=<jwt[:secret]> | jwt:verify:secret
    Enable WebSocket authentication using a JSON Web Token (JWT). This option supports two formats depending on whether the JWT is locally generated or externally fetched and verified:

    <jwt[:secret]>: Specifies a static JWT for WebSocket authentication, with an optional secret for local generation or validation. If only "jwt" is provided (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt), GoAccess generates a JWT using a secret sourced from the environment variable GOACCESS_WSAUTH_SECRET or a default HS256-compatible secret if unset. If a secret is included (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:mysecret), it's used directly as the HS256 signing key or read from a file if the value is a valid path (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:/path/to/secret.key).

    jwt:verify:secret: Enables verification of an externally fetched JWT (e.g., via --ws-auth-url). The "verify" keyword indicates that the JWT is provided by an external source, and the secret must be specified for validation. The secret can be a direct HS256 key (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:verify:mysecret), a file path (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:verify:/path/to/secret.key), or an environment variable name (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:verify:$JWT_SECRET). This format is required when using --ws-auth-url and optionally --ws-auth-refresh-url to fetch and verify JWTs from external endpoints.

    When this option is used, the HTML report will not bootstrap the initial parsed data. Instead, it will only display the report if authentication succeeds, ensuring secure access to real-time data.

    The system processes this option as follows:

    For <jwt[:secret]>: If no secret is provided, GoAccess generates a JWT locally using the GOACCESS_WSAUTH_SECRET environment variable or a default secret. If a secret is specified, it's used to sign the JWT (either directly or from a file).

    For jwt:verify:secret: The secret is mandatory and used to verify externally fetched JWTs. It must match the signing key used by the external authentication server (e.g., at --ws-auth-url).

    Requires to build GoAccess with --with-openssl.

--ws-auth-expire=<secs>
    Set the time after which the JWT expires. Defaults to 8 hours (28800 seconds) if not specified.

    Only available for locally generated JWT.

    Users can specify the expiration time in various formats. The value is converted to seconds for JWT expiration validation. Supported formats:

    •   "3600" -> 3600 seconds

    •   "120s" -> 2 minutes

    •   "24h" -> 24 hours = 86,400 seconds

    •   "10m" -> 10 minutes = 600 seconds

    •   "10d" -> 10 days = 864,000 seconds

    The expiration time controls how long the JWT remains valid after issuance, ensuring secure WebSocket connections.

--ws-auth-url=<url>
    Specifies the URL where GoAccess fetches the initial JWT to authenticate the WebSocket connection.

    When this option is used, GoAccess sends a GET request to the specified URL to fetch an initial JWT. The response must be a JSON object containing status, access_token, refresh_token, and expires_in fields.

    Example: --ws-auth-url=https://site.com/api/get-auth-token

    When fetching the token, GoAccess uses { credentials: 'include' } as part of the request to securely retrieve the access token based on the user’s existing authentication session in your system, ensuring token retrieval is safe as long as your users are authenticated.

    This option allows you to integrate your existing authentication system with the GoAccess dashboard, using token retrieval endpoints.

--ws-auth-refresh-url=<url>
    Specifies the URL where GoAccess fetches a new JWT when the current one is about to expire.

    GoAccess proactively refreshes the JWT 60 seconds before expiration by sending a POST request with the refresh_token to this URL. If not provided, it defaults to the same URL as --ws-auth-url.

    Example: --ws-auth-refresh-url=https://site.com/api/refresh-token

    The response format should match that of the initial authentication URL.

  WebSocket Authentication Flow

    GoAccess offers flexible authentication options, supporting both stateless and stateful approaches. In the stateless approach, the refresh token is obtained without cookies or CSRF protection; your backend validates the refresh token’s signature and issues a new access token. Alternatively, the stateful approach allows the initial fetch to issue JWTs along with a `csrf_token`, which is stored in the session. The subsequent refresh request (POST) then performs a CSRF check, requiring the `X-CSRF-TOKEN` header to match the session’s token.

    Initial Authentication:

    •   When started with --ws-auth-url=<url>, GoAccess sends a GET request to fetch an initial JWT.

    •   The expected successful response format:

            {
                "status" : "success",
                "access_token" : "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...",
                "csrf_token" : "3RRjNeR4RTXHmrV1cECkyUmmKeRxm4lzkI0eq41o",
                "refresh_token" : "refresh123xyz",
                "expires_in" : 3600
            }

    •   If authentication fails, the endpoint should return:

            {
                "status": "error",
                "message": "User not authenticated"
            }

    Token Refreshing:

    •   GoAccess refreshes the JWT 60 seconds before expiration by sending a POST request to the specified URL (defaults to --ws-auth-url if --ws-auth-refresh-url is not set):

            { "refresh_token": "refresh123xyz" }

        GoAccess supports both stateless and stateful authentication. For stateless, no cookies or CSRF are required; your backend validates the refresh token signature. For stateful, include a csrf_token in the initial response; GoAccess sends it as X-CSRF-TOKEN in the refresh request, which your backend must validate against the session.

    Periodic Token Validation:

    •   After refreshing, GoAccess confirms the updated JWT’s validity with the WebSocket server by sending:

            { "action": "validate_token", "token": "current-jwt" }

    Important Note: For these options to function, you must specify --ws-auth=jwt:verify:<secret> where <secret> can be:

    •   A path to a file containing the secret key (e.g., /path/to/secret.key)

    •   An environment variable name that holds the secret (e.g., $JWT_SECRET)

    •   The actual HS256 secret key as a string (e.g., mysecretkey123)

    Example: --ws-auth=jwt:verify:/path/to/secret.key

--ws-url=<[scheme://]url[:port]>
    URL to which the WebSocket server responds. This is the URL supplied to the WebSocket constructor on the client side.

    Optionally, it is possible to specify the WebSocket URI scheme, such as ws:// or wss:// for unencrypted and encrypted connections. e.g., wss://goaccess.io

    If GoAccess is running behind a proxy, you could set the client side to connect to a different port by specifying the host followed by a colon and the port. e.g., goaccess.io:9999

    By default, it will attempt to connect to the generated report's hostname. If GoAccess is running on a remote server, the host of the remote server should be specified here. Also, make sure it is a valid host and NOT an http address.

--ping-interval=<secs>
    Enable WebSocket ping with specified interval in seconds. This helps prevent idle connections getting disconnected.

--fifo-in=<path/file>
    Creates a named pipe (FIFO) that reads from on the given path/file.

--fifo-out=<path/file>
    Creates a named pipe (FIFO) that writes to the given path/file.

--ssl-cert=<cert.crt>
    Path to TLS/SSL certificate. In order to enable TLS/SSL support, GoAccess requires that --ssl-cert and --ssl-key are used.

    Only if configured using --with-openssl

--ssl-key=<priv.key>
    Path to TLS/SSL private key. In order to enable TLS/SSL support, GoAccess requires that --ssl-cert and --ssl-key are used.

    Only if configured using --with-openssl

  FILE OPTIONS

-   The log file to parse is read from stdin.

-f --log-file=<logfile>
    Specify the path to the input log file. If set in the config file, it will take priority over -f from the command line.

-S --log-size=<bytes>
    Specify the log size in bytes. This is useful when piping in logs for processing in which the log size can be explicitly set.

-l --debug-file=<debugfile>
    Send all debug messages to the specified file.

-p --config-file=<configfile>
    Specify a custom configuration file to use. If set, it will take priority over the global configuration file (if any).

--external-assets
    Output HTML assets to external JS/CSS files. Great if you are setting up Content Security Policy (CSP). This will create two separate files, goaccess.js and goaccess.css , in the same directory as your report.html file.

--invalid-requests=<filename>
    Log invalid requests to the specified file.

--unknowns-log=<filename>
    Log unknown browsers and OSs to the specified file.

--no-global-config
    Do not load the global configuration file. This directory should normally be /usr/local/etc, unless specified with --sysconfdir=/dir. See --dcf option for finding the default configuration file.

  PARSE OPTIONS

-a --agent-list
    Enable a list of user-agents by host. For faster parsing, do not enable this flag.

-d --with-output-resolver
    Enable IP resolver on HTML|JSON output.

-e --exclude-ip=<IP|IP-range>
    Exclude an IPv4 or IPv6 from being counted. Applicable solely during access log data processing, it does not exclude persisted data. Ranges can be included as well using a dash in between the IPs (start-end).

    Examples:
      exclude-ip 127.0.0.1
      exclude-ip 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.100
      exclude-ip ::1
      exclude-ip 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:808:804-0:0:0:0:0:ffff:808:808

-j --jobs=<1-6>
    This specifies the number of parallel processing threads to be used during the execution of the program. It determines the degree of concurrency when analyzing log data, allowing for parallel processing of multiple tasks simultaneously. It defaults to 1 thread. It's common to set the number of jobs based on the available hardware resources, such as the number of CPU cores.

-H --http-protocol=<yes|no>
    Set/unset HTTP request protocol. This will create a request key containing the request protocol + the actual request.

-M --http-method=<yes|no>
    Set/unset HTTP request method. This will create a request key containing the request method + the actual request.

-o --output=<path/file.[json|csv|html]>
    Write output to stdout given one of the following files and the corresponding extension for the output format:

      /path/file.csv - Comma-separated values (CSV)
      /path/file.json - JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
      /path/file.html - HTML

-q --no-query-string
    Ignore request's query string. i.e., www.google.com/page.htm?query => www.google.com/page.htm.

    Note: Removing the query string can greatly decrease memory consumption, especially on timestamped requests.

-r --no-term-resolver
    Disable IP resolver on terminal output.

--444-as-404
    Treat non-standard status code 444 as 404.

--4xx-to-unique-count
    Add 4xx client errors to the unique visitors count.

--anonymize-ip
    Anonymize the client IP address. The IP anonymization option sets the last octet of IPv4 user IP addresses and the last 80 bits of IPv6 addresses to zeros. e.g., 192.168.20.100 => 192.168.20.0 e.g., 2a03:2880:2110:df07:face:b00c::1 => 2a03:2880:2110:df07::

    Note: This deactivates -a.

--chunk-size=<256-32768>
    This determines the number of lines that form a chunk. This parameter influences the size of the data processed concurrently by each thread, allowing for parallelization of the file reading and processing tasks. The value of chunk-size affects the efficiency of the parallel processing and can be adjusted based on factors such as system resources and the characteristics of the input data.

    Low Values: If chunk-size is set too low, it might result in inefficient processing. For instance, if each chunk contains a very small number of lines, the overhead of managing and coordinating parallel processing might outweigh the benefits.

    Large Values: Conversely, if chunk-size is set too high, it could lead to resource exhaustion. Each chunk represents a portion of data that a thread processes in parallel. Setting chunk-size to an excessively large value might cause memory issues, particularly if there are many parallel threads running simultaneously.

--anonymize-level
    Specifies the anonymization levels: 1 => default, 2 => strong, 3 => pedantic.
    Bits-hidden | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3
     | 8 | 16 | 24
     | 64 | 80 | 96

--all-static-files
    Include static files that contain a query string. e.g., /fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=4.0.3

--browsers-file=<path>
    By default GoAccess parses an "essential/basic" curated list of browsers & crawlers. If you need to add additional browsers, use this option. Include an additional delimited list of browsers/crawlers/feeds etc. See config/browsers.list for an example or https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allinurl/goaccess/master/config/browsers.list

--date-spec=<date|hr|min>
    Set the date specificity to either date (default), hr to display hours or min to display minutes appended to the date.

    This is used in the visitors panel. It's useful for tracking visitors at the hour level. For instance, an hour specificity would yield to display traffic as 18/Dec/2010:19 or minute specificity 18/Dec/2010:19:59.

--double-decode
    Decode double-encoded values. This includes, user-agent, request, and referrer.

--enable-panel=<PANEL>
    Enable parsing and displaying the given panel.

    Available panels:
      VISITORS
      REQUESTS
      REQUESTS_STATIC
      NOT_FOUND
      HOSTS
      OS
      BROWSERS
      VISIT_TIMES
      VIRTUAL_HOSTS
      REFERRERS
      REFERRING_SITES
      KEYPHRASES
      STATUS_CODES
      REMOTE_USER
      CACHE_STATUS
      GEO_LOCATION
      MIME_TYPE
      TLS_TYPE

--fname-as-vhost=<regex>
    Use log filename(s) as virtual host(s). POSIX regex is passed to extract the virtual host from the filename. e.g., --fname-as-vhost='[a-z]*.[a-z]*' can be used to extract awesome.com.log => awesome.com.

--hide-referrer=<NEEDLE>
    Hide a referrer but still count it. Wild cards are allowed in the needle. i.e., *.bing.com.

--hour-spec=<hr|min>
    Set the time specificity to either hour (default) or min to display the tenth of an hour appended to the hour.

    This is used in the time distribution panel. It's useful for tracking peaks of traffic on your server at specific times.

--ignore-crawlers
    Ignore crawlers from being counted.

--unknowns-as-crawlers
    Classify unknown OS and browsers as crawlers.

--ignore-panel=<PANEL>
    Ignore parsing and displaying the given panel.

    Available panels:
      VISITORS
      REQUESTS
      REQUESTS_STATIC
      NOT_FOUND
      HOSTS
      OS
      BROWSERS
      VISIT_TIMES
      VIRTUAL_HOSTS
      REFERRERS
      REFERRING_SITES
      KEYPHRASES
      STATUS_CODES
      REMOTE_USER
      CACHE_STATUS
      GEO_LOCATION
      MIME_TYPE
      TLS_TYPE

--ignore-referrer=<referrer>
    Ignore referrers from being counted. Wildcards allowed. e.g., *.domain.com ww?.domain.*

--ignore-statics=<req|panel>
    Ignore static file requests.

    req
      Only ignore request from valid requests

    panels
      Ignore request from panels.

      Note that it will count them towards the total number of requests

--ignore-status=<CODE>
    Ignore parsing and displaying one or multiple status code(s). For multiple status codes, use this option multiple times.

--keep-last=<num_days>
    Keep the last specified number of days in storage. This will recycle the storage tables. e.g., keep & show only the last 7 days.

--no-ip-validation
    Disable client IP validation. Useful if IP addresses have been obfuscated before being logged. The log still needs to contain a placeholder for %h usually it's a resolved IP. e.g. ord37s19-in-f14.1e100.net.

--no-strict-status
    Disable HTTP status code validation. Some servers would record this value only if a connection was established to the target and the target sent a response. Otherwise, it could be recorded as -.

--num-tests=<number>
    Number of lines from the access log to test against the provided log/date/time format. By default, the parser is set to test 10 lines. If set to 0, the parser won't test any lines and will parse the whole access log. If a line matches the given log/date/time format before it reaches <number>, the parser will consider the log to be valid, otherwise GoAccess will return EXIT_FAILURE and display the relevant error messages.

--process-and-exit
    Parse log and exit without outputting data. Useful if we are looking to only add new data to the on-disk database without outputting to a file or a terminal.

--real-os
    Display real OS names. e.g, Windows XP, Snow Leopard.

--sort-panel=<PANEL,FIELD,ORDER>
    Sort panel on initial load. Sort options are separated by comma. Options are in the form: PANEL,METRIC,ORDER

    Available metrics:
      BY_HITS - Sort by hits
      BY_VISITORS - Sort by unique visitors
      BY_DATA - Sort by data
      BY_BW - Sort by bandwidth
      BY_AVGTS - Sort by average time served
      BY_CUMTS - Sort by cumulative time served
      BY_MAXTS - Sort by maximum time served
      BY_PROT - Sort by http protocol
      BY_MTHD - Sort by http method

    Available orders:
      ASC
      DESC

--static-file=<extension>
    Add static file extension. e.g.: .mp3 Extensions are case sensitive.

  GEOLOCATION OPTIONS

-g --std-geoip
    Standard GeoIP database for less memory usage.

--geoip-database=<geofile>
    Specify path to GeoIP database file. i.e., GeoLiteCity.dat.

    If using GeoIP2, you will need to download the GeoLite2 City or Country database from MaxMind.com and use the option --geoip-database to specify the database. You can also get updated database files for GeoIP legacy, you can find these as GeoLite Legacy Databases from MaxMind.com. IPv4 and IPv6 files are supported as well. For updated DB URLs, please see the default GoAccess configuration file.

    Note: --geoip-city-data is an alias of --geoip-database.

  OTHER OPTIONS

-h --help
    The help.

-s --storage
    Display current storage method. i.e., B+ Tree, Hash.

-V --version
    Display version information and exit.

--dcf
    Display the path of the default config file when `-p` is not used.

  PERSISTENCE STORAGE OPTIONS

--persist
    Persist parsed data into disk. If database files exist, files will be overwritten. This should be set to the first dataset. See examples below.

--restore
    Load previously stored data from disk. If reading persisted data only, the database files need to exist. See --persist and examples below.

--db-path=<dir>
    Path where the on-disk database files are stored. The default value is the /tmp directory.

CUSTOM LOG/DATE FORMAT
GoAccess can parse virtually any web log format.

Predefined options include, Common Log Format (CLF), Combined Log Format (XLF/ELF), including virtual host, Amazon CloudFront (Download Distribution), Google Cloud Storage and W3C format (IIS).

GoAccess allows any custom format string as well.

There are two ways to configure the log format. The easiest is to run GoAccess with -c to prompt a configuration window. Otherwise, it can be configured under ~/.goaccessrc or the %sysconfdir%.

time-format
    The time-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log format time containing any combination of regular characters and special format specifiers. They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`. %T or %H:%M:%S.

    Note: If a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as time-format or %* if the timestamp is given in milliseconds.

date-format
    The date-format variable followed by a space, specifies the log format date containing any combination of regular characters and special format specifiers. They all begin with a percentage (%) sign. See `man strftime`. e.g., %Y-%m-%d.

    Note: If a timestamp is given in microseconds, %f must be used as date-format or %* if the timestamp is given in milliseconds.

log-format
    The log-format variable followed by a space or \\t , specifies the log format string.

%x  A date and time field matching the time-format and date-format variables. This is used when given a timestamp or the date & time are concatenated as a single string (e.g., 1501647332 or 20170801235000) instead of the date and time being in two separated variables.

%t  time field matching the time-format variable.

%d  date field matching the date-format variable.

%v  The canonical Server Name of the server serving the request (Virtual Host).

%e  This is the userid of the person requesting the document as determined by HTTP authentication.

%C  The cache status of the object the server served.

%h  host (the client IP address, either IPv4 or IPv6)

%r  The request line from the client. This requires specific delimiters around the request (as single quotes, double quotes, or anything else) to be parsable. If not, we have to use a combination of special format specifiers as %m %U %H.

%q  The query string.

%m  The request method.

%U  The URL path requested.

    Note: If the query string is in %U, there is no need to use %q. However, if the URL path, does not include any query string, you may use %q and the query string will be appended to the request.

%H  The request protocol.

%s  The status code that the server sends back to the client.

%b  The size of the object returned to the client.

%R  The "Referrer" HTTP request header.

%u  The user-agent HTTP request header.

%K  The TLS encryption settings chosen for the connection. (In Apache LogFormat: %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x)

%k  The TLS encryption settings chosen for the connection. (In Apache LogFormat: %{SSL_CIPHER}x)

%M  The MIME-type of the requested resource. (In Apache LogFormat: %{Content-Type}o)

%D  The time taken to serve the request, in microseconds as a decimal number.

%T  The time taken to serve the request, in seconds with milliseconds resolution.

%L  The time taken to serve the request, in milliseconds as a decimal number.

%n  The time taken to serve the request, in nanoseconds.

%^  Ignore this field.

%~  Move forward through the log string until a non-space (!isspace) char is found.

~h  The host (the client IP address, either IPv4 or IPv6) in a X-Forwarded-For (XFF) field.

    It uses a special specifier which consists of a tilde before the host specifier, followed by the character(s) that delimit the XFF field, which are enclosed by curly braces. i.e., "~h{, }

    For example, "~h{, }" is used in order to parse "11.25.11.53, 17.68.33.17" field which is delimited by a comma and a space (enclosed by double quotes).

    XFF field | specifier
     | "~h{, }"
     | ~h{", }
     | ~h{, }
     | ~h{ }

Note: In order to get the average, cumulative and maximum time served in GoAccess, you will need to start logging response times in your web server. In Nginx you can add $request_time to your log format, or %D in Apache.

Important: If multiple time served specifiers are used at the same time, the first option specified in the format string will take priority over the other specifiers.

GoAccess requires the following fields:

    %h a valid IPv4/6

    %d a valid date

    %r the request

INTERACTIVE MENU

F1 or h
    Main help.

F5  Redraw main window.

q   Quit the program, current window or collapse active module

o or ENTER
    Expand selected module or open window

+   Expand the selected item's children when a module is already expanded.

-   Collapse the selected item's children when a module is already expanded.

0-9 and Shift + 0
    Set selected module to active

p   Reorder the dashboard panels interactively (press `p` or `P`).

j   Scroll down within expanded module

k   Scroll up within expanded module

c   Set or change scheme color.

r   Toggle reverse order of chart bars for the active module.

m   Cycle chart metric forward for the active module (hits, visitors, bandwidth).

M   Cycle chart metric backward for the active module.

l   Toggle logarithmic scale for chart bars in the active module.

TAB Forward iteration of modules. Starts from current active module.

SHIFT + TAB
    Backward iteration of modules. Starts from current active module.

^f  Scroll forward one screen within an active module.

^b  Scroll backward one screen within an active module.

s   Sort options for active module

/   Search across all modules (regex allowed)

n   Find the position of the next occurrence across all modules.

g   Move to the first item or top of screen.

G   Move to the last item or bottom of screen.

EXAMPLES
Note: Piping data into GoAccess won't prompt a log/date/time configuration dialog, you will need to previously define it in your configuration file or in the command line.

  DIFFERENT OUTPUTS

To output to a terminal and generate an interactive report:

    # goaccess access.log

To generate an HTML report:

    # goaccess access.log -a -o report.html

To generate a JSON report:

    # goaccess access.log -a -d -o report.json

To generate a CSV file:

    # goaccess access.log --no-csv-summary -o report.csv

GoAccess also allows real-time monitoring from stdin:

    # tail -f access.log | goaccess -

To filter while keeping the pipe open for real-time analysis:

    # tail -f access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'firefox' | goaccess --log-format=COMBINED -

Parse from the beginning of the file while maintaining the pipe:

    # tail -f -n +0 access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'firefox' | goaccess --log-format=COMBINED -o report.html --real-time-html -

Convert log date timezone to Europe/Berlin:

    # goaccess access.log --log-format='%h %^[%x] "%r" %s %b "%R" "%u"' --datetime-format='%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z' --tz=Europe/Berlin --date-spec=min

  MULTIPLE LOG FILES

Parse multiple logs by passing them to the command line:

    # goaccess access.log access.log.1

Parse from a pipe while also reading regular files (append - for stdin):

    # cat access.log.2 | goaccess access.log access.log.1 -

Note that the single dash is appended to the command line to let GoAccess know that it should read from the pipe.

Process all compressed log files plus the current log:

    # zcat access.log.*.gz | goaccess access.log -

Note: On macOS, use gunzip -c instead of zcat. Note: If GoAccess was built with --with-zlib, it can parse .gz files directly without external decompression:

    # goaccess access.log access.log.1.gz access.log.2.gz

  REAL-TIME HTML OUTPUT

Generate a real-time HTML report:

    # goaccess access.log -o /usr/share/nginx/html/site/report.html --real-time-html

Specify the WebSocket URL explicitly:

    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --ws-url=goaccess.io

Use a custom port:

    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --port=9870

Bind WebSocket to a specific address:

    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --addr=127.0.0.1

Note: For TLS/SSL real-time output, use --ssl-cert=<cert.crt> and --ssl-key=<priv.key>. If GoAccess is running behind a reverse proxy, set the WebSocket URL to include the proxy path and port, e.g.:

    # goaccess access.log -o report.html --real-time-html --ws-url=goaccess.io:8080/ws

  WORKING WITH DATES

All requests from a specific date to end of file:

    # sed -n '/05Dec2010/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -a -

Using a relative date (one week ago):

    # sed -n '/'$(date '+%d%b%Y' -d '1 week ago')'/,$ p' access.log | goaccess -a -

Parse a specific date range:

    # sed -n '/5Nov2010/,/5Dec2010/ p' access.log | goaccess -a -

Keep only the last 5 days of data:

    # goaccess access.log --keep-last=5

  VIRTUAL HOSTS

Use --concat-vhost-req to prepend the virtual host or server block (%v) to the request field.

Append virtual host manually:

    # awk '$8=$1$8' access.log | goaccess -a -

Exclude a list of virtual hosts:

    # grep -v "`cat exclude_vhost_list_file`" vhost_access.log | goaccess -

  FILES, STATUS CODES & BOTS

Parse only specific page types (html, htm, php):

    # awk '$7~/.html|.htm|.php/' access.log | goaccess -

Parse page views without extensions:

    # awk '$7!~/..*$/' access.log | goaccess -

Filter by a single status code (e.g., 500):

    # awk '$9~/500/' access.log | goaccess -

Filter by multiple status codes (3xx or 5xx):

    # tail -f -n +0 access.log | awk '$9~/3[0-9]{2}|5[0-9]{2}/' | goaccess -o out.html -

Estimate bot traffic:

    # tail -F -n +0 access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'bot' | goaccess -

  SERVER

Run GoAccess at lower CPU priority:

    # nice -n 19 goaccess -f access.log -a

Pipe logs from a remote server:

    # ssh -n root@server 'tail -f /var/log/apache2/access.log' | goaccess -

Note: SSH requires -n so GoAccess can read from stdin. Use SSH keys for authentication.

  INCREMENTAL LOG PROCESSING

GoAccess can process logs incrementally by persisting data to disk, then restoring it and appending new data. GoAccess tracks inodes, the last line parsed, and the last timestamp per file.

Note: If the inode doesn't match, all lines are parsed. If it matches, remaining lines are read and the count/timestamp updated. Log lines with a timestamp ≤ the stored timestamp are skipped. Piped data works off the timestamp of the last line read.

Warning: Piped data may produce duplicate entries since multiple consecutive lines can share the same timestamp. Best practice is to parse directly with GoAccess rather than piping for incremental processing.

Persist last month's log:

    # goaccess access.log.1 --persist

Append this month's log and preserve:

    # goaccess access.log --restore --persist

Read persisted data only:

    # goaccess --restore

NOTES

GoAccess keeps track of inodes of all the files processed (assuming files will stay on the same partition), in addition, it extracts a snippet of data from the log along with the last line parsed of each file and the timestamp of the last line parsed. e.g., inode:29627417|line:20012|ts:20171231235059

First it compares if the snippet matches the log being parsed, if it does, it assumes the log hasn't changed dramatically, e.g., hasn't been truncated. If the inode does not match the current file, it parses all lines. If the current file matches the inode, it then reads the remaining lines and updates the count of lines parsed and the timestamp. As an extra precaution, it won't parse log lines with a timestamp ≤ than the one stored.

Piped data works based off the timestamp of the last line read. For instance, it will parse and discard all incoming entries until it finds a timestamp >= than the one stored.

For instance:

    // last month access log
    # goaccess access.log.1 --persist

then, load it with

    // append this month access log, and preserve new data
    # goaccess access.log --restore --persist

To read persisted data only (without parsing new data)

    # goaccess --restore

NOTES
Each active panel has a total of 366 items or 50 in the real-time HTML report. The number of items is customizable using max-items Note that HTML, CSV and JSON output allow a maximum number greater than the default value of 366 items per panel.

A hit is a request (line in the access log), e.g., 10 requests = 10 hits. HTTP requests with the same IP, date, and user agent are considered a unique visit.

If you want to enable dual-stack support, please use --addr=:: instead of the default --addr=0.0.0.0.

The generated report will attempt to reconnect to the WebSocket server after 1 second with exponential backoff. It will attempt to connect 20 times.

BUGS
If you think you have found a bug, please send me an email to goaccess@prosoftcorp.com or use the issue tracker in https://github.com/allinurl/goaccess/issues

AUTHOR
Gerardo Orellana <hello@goaccess.io> For more details about it, or new releases, please visit https://goaccess.io