rick taught me new and
exciting ways to search through apache log files to find where the hits to
my site have been coming from. If I were in charge of the server, it'd be
easy. But since I exist here only through the grace of god I try to tread lightly.
After punching in an exceptionally long, heavily pipe'd command,(the
actual
command goes as follows: cat /usr/local/apache/logs/access_log | grep
chico | awk '{ print $1 }' | tail -200 | sort -u | more ) i get a string
of results.
From that I can use some guess work to figure out who's who. For example:
cache-mtc-ac02.proxy.aol.com
There's a short list of people
who could be attached to that name. Another entry would be:
crawler11.googlebot.com
that's the google fairy paying me a
visit. The
interesting links follow. Part of the host name has been removed, just in
case it's a visitor from a machine that has a static host name.
- cnet.jyu.fi .fi is the country code for Finland. I know
absolutly no one in finland.
- lab.csuchico.edu Cal State
Chico. Probably results from a search. The City of Chico chamber of
commerce is the reason i don't have chico.org
- math.mun.ca
Memorial university of Newfoundland. I didn't know they had enough people
for a college in NF. (i'm kidding. please don't send the dogs after me.)
Maybe this was someone who came accross the appiled mathematics and
college basketball section. I'd be really interested to know If i was
cited in someone's work. (god I hope not. I'm the last person you should
consult for anything other than basic math.)
- du.simnet.is An
internet service provider in iceland.
- net.hfh.edu This looks
really simple, an institute of higher learning (They're the only ones
assigned a .edu Top Level Domain). But there is no
www.hfh.edu. Google doesn't return anything from the hfh.edu domain.
Nothing at all. Question answered: hfh.edu belongs to henry ford
Hospital, according to a usenet posting from 1993. It must still be in use
for internal DNS, but connecting to http://www.hfh.edu does not return a
valid web page.
- upc-g.chello.nl I have an idea of who this
might be. I'll have to watch the logs for more hits from this provider.
9-29 More fun.
- user.trinity-health.org
Somebody there must like me, or must have wasted half a day looking
through my pages.
This site has had five unique
(non-search spider) hits over five days, averaging a whopping one person
per day. A really talented geek could automate those figures.
9-30
- 174-s.dhcp.csuchico.edu The same user from
Cal State Chico? or just another hapless victim of my web address?
- cache-mtc-ab07.proxy.aol.com cache-mtc-ac02.proxy.aol.com An
interesting phenomenon I've picked up on. AOL redirects its traffic through
several proxies, seemingly at random, for each user. Any ideas as to why?
10-6
New Fun and games. Slashdot has an
article on it's main page today concerning the way google is handling
some search patterns. I've added a simple, basically blank page with some
correct keyword meta tags to see if i can generate a spike in the number
of hits to this site. And to annoy a percentage of slashdot readers and
Google Whackers.
The Google fairy happened to stop by here just before I uploaded the page,
so the traffic may take a while to come it, if it comes at all.
I still need a non-intrusive way of tracking the loads of just that
particular page. Never mind. I can make grep do that.
Dear Diary; Today I learned that you can use grep for phrases other than
just your user name which will still return the results you want, So long
as the phrase you use is unique to your site name.
home