Urchin

The Urchin Web Log Analyzer is an efficient, fast, and easy to use web log analysis and reporting tool. Urchin installs directly on your Virtual Private Server and creates HTML-based graphical reports of your web server traffic. It offers several special features such as multi-language reporting, e-commerce log reporting, and up to 24 Virtual Subhosts (plus your primary host). Urchin also features a special domain-lookup utility which resolves IP addresses into domains without creating a load on your server.

Installation

To install Urchin, connect to your Virtual Private Server via SSH or Telnet and run the following command:

% vinstall urchin

Usage

Urchin has already been compiled and configured for your Virtual Private Server, including up to 25 Virtual Subhosts with log files. Since Urchin should not be run on the same log files more than once, it is set up to automatically archive your log files when it runs. It does this by renaming the log files, but does not delete or compress them. You can either Rotate the Log Files separately, or use the Urchin configuration file to configure alternate methods of archiving log files.

To run Urchin and create your first report type the following while connected to your Virtual Private Server via SSH or Telnet.

% ~/usr/local/urchin/urchin

This will create your reports at the following location.

http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/urchin/YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME

You can also see a system report for the entire Virtual Private Server by viewing this URL:

http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/urchin/system/

You can configure your VPS to run Urchin automatically. The following is an example of a Cron entry that will run Urchin at 11:50 PM every Sunday night:

50 23 * * 0 $HOME/usr/local/urchin/urchin

When Urchin runs, it generates a report of its activity. If you want to keep a log file of Urchin's activity, you can redirect the report to a file on your server by using the following cron entry:

50 23 * * 0 $HOME/usr/local/urchin/urchin >> $HOME/var/log/urchin 2>&1

Documentation

See the Urchin Virtual Server Support site for more documentation.