The “ApacheTop” package has been written to allow users to monitor real time statistics based on the Apache log files. ApacheTop is a great way to keep an eye on your Apache web server statistics. It allows you to monitor how many requests you get (total and per second), bandwidth usage (total and per second), the number of 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx HTTP return code responses, individual page/url requests, and more.
ApacheTop is similar in style to the ‘top’ program for monitoring running processes, and also the ‘ntop’ program for monitoring network traffic. The application loads, and sits there constantly updating, and waiting for commands from the user.
Installing ApacheTop:
For Ubuntu or Debian:
$ sudo apt-get -y install apachetop
For CentOS or RedHat Enterprise Linux:
# yum install gcc gcc-c++ ncurses-devel readline-devel make wget # wget "http://www.webta.org/apachetop/apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz" # tar xzvf apachetop-0.12.6.tar.gz # cd apachetop-0.12.6 # ./configure # make # make install
For other distributions, you can download the source files from http://www.webta.org/projects/apachetop/.
Running ApacheTop:
apachetop -f /path/to/apache/access.log
(Note: if you dont have read access to the log file, you may need to run apachetop as root, by prefixing the ‘apachetop’ command with the ‘sudo’ command)
Eg:
sudo apachetop -f /path/to/apache/access.log
Example output:
last hit: 15:06:23 atop runtime: 0 days, 00:05:35 15:06:33
All: 26 reqs ( 0.1/sec) 206.9K ( 685.6B/sec) 8148.6B/req
2xx: 25 (96.2%) 3xx: 0 ( 0.0%) 4xx: 1 ( 3.8%) 5xx: 0 ( 0.0%)
R (335s): 26 reqs ( 0.1/sec) 206.9K ( 632.4B/sec) 8148.6B/req
2xx: 25 (96.2%) 3xx: 0 ( 0.0%) 4xx: 1 ( 3.8%) 5xx: 0 ( 0.0%)
REQS REQ/S KB KB/S URL
1 0.03 16.5 0.6 /
1 0.07 8.2 0.6 /images/021.png
1 0.07 1.3 0.1 /images/011.png
1 0.07 4.8 0.3 /images/06.png
1 0.07 4.0 0.3 /images/031.png
1 0.07 5.0 0.4 /images/07.png
1 0.07 4.3 0.3 /images/08.png
1 0.07 4.4 0.3 /images/09.png
1 0.07 3.9 0.3 /images/10.png
1 0.07 3.6 0.3 /images/11.png
1 0.07 3.4 0.2 /images/12.png
1 0.07 3.5 0.2 /images/13.png
1 0.08 4.6 0.4 /images/14.png
1 0.08 2.7 0.2 /images/15.png
1 0.08 24.3 1.9 /images/041.png
1 0.08 6.0 0.5 /images/051.png
You can specify a number of options when running apachetop, and these can be see by reading the man page, or by running apachetop with the –help parameter:
Eg:
apachetop --help
The two options that I find the most useful are the -H and the -T options:
-H hits remember stats for this many hits -T secs remember stats for this many seconds
By default ApacheTop remembers stats for 30 seconds. 600 is a good figure to use (10 minutes) for the -T option.
Note: I had issues with apachetop running on Ubuntu where the hot keys wouldn’t get picked up, and to exit I had to press ctrl-c. If you know why this occurs, or know how to fix it, please add a comment below.
