Pixelistik Request Log Analyzer Save

Installation

Download and unzip one of the 64-bit Linux / macOS / Windows binaries from the releases page (built on Travis/Appveyor servers). The program is a single binary that you run in the terminal.

Alternatively you can build from source, if you have a Rust toolchain set up: Clone the repository and run cargo build --release.

Usage

Request.log Analyzer

USAGE:
    request_log_analyzer [OPTIONS] [--] [FILES]...

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -q, --quiet      Don't output results to stdout
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    --exclude <TERM>...                          Exclude lines that contain one of these terms
    --graphite-port <GRAPHITE_PORT>               [default: 2003]
    --graphite-prefix <GRAPHITE_PREFIX>
    Prefix for Graphite key, e.g. 'servers.prod.publisher1'

    --graphite-server <GRAPHITE_SERVER>
    Send values to this Graphite server instead of stdout

    --include <TERM>...
    Only include lines that contain one of these terms

    --influxdb-write-url <INFLUXDB_WRITE_URL>
    base URL of InfluxDB to send metrics to, e.g. 'http://localhost:8086/write?db=mydb'

    --influxdb-tags <INFLUXDB_TAGS>
    tags for the submitted measurement, e.g. 'host=prod3' or 'host=prod3,type=worker'

    --prometheus-listen <BINDING_ADDRESS>
    Address and port to bind Prometheus HTTP server to, e.g. 'localhost:9898'

    -t <MINUTES>                                     Limit to the last n minutes

ARGS:
    <FILES>...    Log files to analyze, defaults to stdin

Example output

$ request_log_analyzer crx-quickstart/logs/request.log
count:	54510
time.avg:	127
time.min:	1
time.median:	6
time.90percent:	27
time.99percent:	3614
time.max:	15747
error.client_error_4xx_rate:	0.023
error.server_error_5xx_rate:	0.0002

Getting started

Analyze an entire log file

Run the tool on a request.log file

$ request_log_analyzer crx-quickstart/logs/request.log
count:  1221
time.avg:       840
time.min:       0
time.median:    841
time.90percent: 1537
time.99percent: 1650
time.max:       1709
error.client_error_4xx_rate:	0.02
error.server_error_5xx_rate:	0.01

Let's run through the results:

There are 1221 request/response pairs in the log file.
The average response time was 840ms.
The fastest response was 0ms.
The median response time was 841ms.
The 90 percentile response time was 1537ms. That means that 90% of all requests were finished after 1537ms.
The 99 percentile response time was 1650ms. That means that 99% of all requests were finished after 1650ms.
The slowest response was 1709ms.
2% of all requests have failed with a 4xx HTTP error code (client error).
1% of all requests have failed with a 5xx HTTP error code (server error).

Include only certain requests

Let's say we only care about the rendering of HTML pages, so we want to ignore anything else.

$ request_log_analyzer --include "text/html" crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

Now the result only refers to data where either request or response line contains the specified --include term, in this case the MIME type "text/html"

Restrict to latest period

Now we specifically want to look at the latest hour, because we suspect a recent problem:

$ request_log_analyzer -t 60 crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

With the -t param, only the most recent n minutes will be taken into account.

Combine everything

$ request_log_analyzer --include "text/html" \
	--include "content/dam/" \
	--exclude "POST" \
	-t 180 \
	crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

We look at request/response lines that contain "text/html" (the MIME type) or a path from the DAM, but we exclude POST requests. Also, we are only interested in the latest 3 hours.

Piped log data

If the built-in filtering options are not enough, we can use other tools for filtering the log lines and the pipe them into the tool for analysis:

$ grep "09:..:.." crx-quickstart/logs/request.log | request_log_analyzer

Here we only look at the request/response lines from a specific hour.

Continuous monitoring

Graphite

In the examples above, we used request_log_analyzer for individual insights.

But it can also be used to continuously feed data into a Graphite, InfluxDB or Prometheus data store, in order to be used for monitoring.

$ request_log_analyzer -t 5 \
	--graphite-server localhost \
	--graphite-prefix my-app.production.5min \
	crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

This will analyze the latest 5 minutes of the log file, then push it to a Graphite server running on localhost, storing the results under the keys

my-app.production.5min.requests.count
my-app.production.5min.requests.time.max
my-app.production.5min.requests.time.min

etc.

If you set this command up as a cronjob to run every 1 minute, you can constantly monitor the data for the previous 5 minute window.

InfluxDB

$ request_log_analyzer -t 5 \
    --quiet \
    --influxdb-write-url "http://localhost:8086/write?db=metrics" \
    --influxdb-tags type=publisher,time=5min \
    crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

This will analyze the latest 5 minutes of the log file, then push it to an InfluxDB server running on localhost, storing the results in the database metrics as the measurement request_log with the fields time_max, time_min etc. The result will not be displayed in the terminal.

--influxdb-tags are an optional way to identify and categorize your measurements, in this example the tags type=publisher and time=5min are set.

Prometheus

$ request_log_analyzer -t 5 --prometheus-listen localhost:9898 crx-quickstart/logs/request.log

This will start a Prometheus endpoint (a small HTTP server) on port 9898. Whenever the Prometheus server queries this endpoint, the latest 5 minutes of the request.log will be analyzed and the results will be provided under the keys

request_count
request_time_max
request_time_min

etc. If you set up your Prometheus server to pull data from this endpoint, you can constantly monitor the data for the previous 5 minute window.