goaccess(1) User Manuals 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. De- signed with system administrators, DevOps engineers, and security profes- sionals 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 trou- bleshoot 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 con- sumption. Unique visitors This panel shows metrics such as hits, unique visitors and cumula- tive 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 re- verse DNS lookup result, country of origin and city. If the -a argu- ment 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 re- ferred 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 deter- mined by HTTP authentication. If the document is not password pro- tected, 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 vari- able. 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 limit- ing 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 de- fault. --with-openssl Compile GoAccess with OpenSSL support for its WebSocket server. --with-zlib Enables optional zlib support to allow parsing of com- pressed log files (e.g., 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 for- mat time containing either a name of a predefined format (see op- tions 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 for- mat time containing either a name of a predefined format (see op- tions 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 es- caped. In addition to specifying the raw log/date/time formats, for sim- plicity, 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 config- uration dialog, you will need to previously define it in your con- figuration file or in the command line. Note: The default GoAccess format for CADDY is the 'local/info' for- mat. Nevertheless, if needed, you have the option to utilize a cus- tom 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 at- tributes are comma separated), such as: bold, underline, normal, re- verse, 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 con- taining 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 re- port 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 Amer- ica/Chicago or Africa/Cairo If an invalid timezone name is given, the output will be in GMT. See --datetime-format in order to prop- erly 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 an- other 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 inten- tionally 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 ac- cess 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 ad- vised 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 op- tion. --port=<port> Specify the port to use. By default GoAccess' WebSocket server lis- tens 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 GOAC- CESS_WSAUTH_SECRET or a default HS256-compatible secret if unset. If a secret is included (e.g., --ws-auth=jwt:mysecret), it's used di- rectly 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 speci- fied 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 re- quired 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 au- thentication 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 authen- ticate the WebSocket connection. When this option is used, GoAccess sends a GET request to the speci- fied 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 useras 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 tokenas signature and issues a new ac- cess 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 ses- sionas token. Initial Authentication: * When started with --ws-auth-url=<url>, GoAccess sends a GET re- quest to fetch an initial JWT. * The expected successful response format: { "status" : "success", "access_token" : "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIs- InR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...", "csrf_token" : "3RRjNeR4RTXHmrV1cECkyUmmK- eRxm4lzkI0eq41o", "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 send- ing 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 JWTas 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/se- cret.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 set- ting 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 en- able 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 process- ing of multiple tasks simultaneously. It defaults to 1 thread. It's common to set the number of jobs based on the available hardware re- sources, such as the number of CPU cores. -H --http-protocol=<yes|no> Set/unset HTTP request protocol. This will create a request key con- taining the request protocol + the actual request. -M --http-method=<yes|no> Set/unset HTTP request method. This will create a request key con- taining 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 cor- responding 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 consump- tion, 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 parame- ter influences the size of the data processed concurrently by each thread, allowing for parallelization of the file reading and pro- cessing 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 ineffi- cient 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 exces- sively 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 | +-------------+---------+---------+---------+ | IPv4 | 8 | 16 | 24 | +-------------+---------+---------+---------+ | IPv6 | 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 exam- ple or https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allinurl/goaccess/mas- ter/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 visi- tors 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 ex- tract the virtual host from the filename. e.g., --fname-as- vhost='[a-z]*.[a-z]*' can be used to extract awesome.com.log => awe- some.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 track- ing 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., *.do- main.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 ob- fuscated 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 for- mat 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. Op- tions 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-data- base to specify the database. You can also get updated database files for GeoIP legacy, you can find these as GeoLite Legacy Data- bases 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 exam- ples 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 Distribu- tion), 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 for- mat time containing any combination of regular characters and spe- cial 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 for- mat date containing any combination of regular characters and spe- cial 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 vari- ables. 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 deter- mined 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 spe- cial 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-For- warded-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 (en- closed by double quotes). +--------------------------------------+-----------+ | XFF field | specifier | +--------------------------------------+-----------+ | "192.1.2.3, 192.68.33.17, 192.1.1.2" | "~h{, }" | +--------------------------------------+-----------+ | "192.1.2.12", "192.68.33.17" | ~h{", } | +--------------------------------------+-----------+ | 192.1.2.12, 192.68.33.17 | ~h{, } | +--------------------------------------+-----------+ | 192.1.2.14 192.68.33.17 192.1.1.2 | ~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 hMain 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 ex- panded. - Collapse the selected item's children when a module is already ex- panded. 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 decom- pression: # 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=goac- cess.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=goac- cess.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 | goac- cess - 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}/' | goac- cess -o out.html - Estimate bot traffic: # tail -F -n +0 access.log | grep -i --line-buffered 'bot' | goac- cess - 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' | goac- cess - Note: SSH requires -n so GoAccess can read from stdin. Use SSH keys for au- thentication. 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, re- maining lines are read and the count/timestamp updated. Log lines with a timestamp ax 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 consecu- tive 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., in- ode: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 trun- cated. 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 pre- caution, it won't parse log lines with a timestamp ax than the one stored. Piped data works based off the timestamp of the last line read. For in- stance, 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 re- port. 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 af- ter 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 goac- cess@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 re- leases, please visit https://goaccess.io GNU+Linux MAR 2026 goaccess(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | STORAGE | CONFIGURATION | OPTIONS | CUSTOM LOG/DATE FORMAT | INTERACTIVE MENU | EXAMPLES | NOTES | BUGS | AUTHOR
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