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Tony
Asked: 2009-09-10 05:57:18 +0800 CST

How do I navigate a log file backwards?

  • 772

I want to look through my apache access log backwards. How can I do that on Ubuntu?

apache-2.2

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    print the file from the last line to the first one (the older the line is the more it will be printed close to the end):

    tac /my/file | less
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  2. have you tried the command "tac"? It cats files backwards.

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  3. First You may configure your /etc/logrotate.conf, man logrotate for more information. You can specify some infomations : If you want to rotate log files weekly and keep 4 weeks worth of backlogs 

    
weekly
rotate 4

    After you can browse you log 4 weeks ago, using you favorite viewer, like awstat, tail -f ...

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  4. Go to the end of the file and press the up arrow?

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  5. do you mean tail the logfile? use tail -f to monitor the logfile.

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  6. If a rotation is made, look into the configuration of the rotation. If a rotation is made every 4 days, that means that you will have to look on the archive made 4 days ago in order to read the period of time log.

    You will find in the log directory tar.gz files (which are archives of the log) like samba.1.tar.gz, samba.2.tar.gz simply extract the file you want 

    tar -zxvf samba.2.tar.gz

    and you will be able to read old logs.

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