track downloads from server on ubuntu?

Question

Kinda server noob. Is there a simple command to run on server access logs to track downloads of a particular file? Running Ubuntu 10.04.

Answer 1

$ grep "/path/to/file" /var/log/httpd/access.log | wc -l

That looks for entries in your access log for '/path/to/file' and gives you a count of those lines. Run it against more logs for more days.

Answer 2

As Bill Weiss suggested, though older files are compressed, run zgrep on them. You can also use tail to see requested files in real time:

tail -f /var/log/httpd/access.log | grep "/path/to/file"

or to monitor multiple files:

tail -f /var/log/httpd/access.log | grep -E "(/path/to/file|/path/to/other/file)"