Anonymizing IPs in apache access/error logs

apache-2.2iplogging

I'd like to give my server's visitors more anonymity and do not want to store their IP address in the access and error logs anymore.
This is possible in several ways, e.g. by following ApacheLogsWithoutIPs or just using mod_removeip.

Unfortunately this means that I cannot track the number of unique visitors to my site anymore – which is a problem for me.

Thus I'm looking for a way to store an anonymized IP address in the apache logs that doesn't reveal the user's real IP address but still allows to differentiate between the visitors in awstats. What can I do? I'd prefer an Apache in-built solution and not a script that walks over the logs after writing them.

Anonymize IP logging in nginx?

Best Answer

If you want to use an apache module there is mod_anonstats, which can be used to hash the ip address using md5.

If you need to track distinct users, just keep the ASSaltTimeout parameter to a high value.

Related Solutions

Windows – How to have daily error and access logs on Apache (for Windows)

What you're looking for is the rotatelogs program that comes with apache http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/rotatelogs.html

For instance, to rotate your logs daily at midnight:

CustomLog "|bin/rotatelogs -f /var/log/apache2/logfile.%Y.%m.%d.log 86400" common

Ssh – Can tail slow down log writing speed on Linux (ext3)

I don't think there will be some blocking over I/O here. When you do "tail -f", what's happening is

your shell process, let's say bash, will spawn a new process 'tail'.
tail will open the file, move file pointer to the end, wait for 3 seconds and check whether there are new data.
if there is new data, tail will push it back to the bash using unix pipe.
this data gets transmitted from server to your machine by bash + ssh.

So as you can see, a slow internet connection won't affect step #2, which is the key for I/O performance anyway.

Plus, tail opens file in 'read-only' mode and, an educated guess, logs are open in 'append-only' mode, so there shouldn't be much locking here to worry about. If this is still a bit concern for you, then you may want to try out the inotail which is based on latest linux inotify api to avoid polling the file.

Hope this helps, Alex

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – How to have daily error and access logs on Apache (for Windows)

Ssh – Can tail slow down log writing speed on Linux (ext3)

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