Server Logging

ACP produces two types of log files: (1) the server log, and (2) the usage log. This page describes these log files.

Server Log

The web and FTP servers record all accesses in a server log file. A new server log file is started each day that either of the servers is active. These logs are created in the directory specified in the Preferences, Servers tab, "Path to folder for web/FTP activity logs" field. The normal location varies between Windows versions, so just look at the setting in ACP Preferences.

You can disable server logging by clearing the " Path to folder for web activity logs" field. This will stop ACP from making web and FTP logs.

The logs are named DARTddmmyyyy.log, where ddmmyyyy is the day, month, and year when the log was created. For example, the log for April 7, 2006 would be named DART07042006.log.

These logs are never deleted. Thus, after a period of time you may discover a large number of these logs in the configured directory, and because the System Status display web page refreshes every 6 seconds, these logs will get large. It is up to you to delete old logs as you see fit.

The log file is in the W3C Extended Log File Format. The fields are space delimited instead of the W3C recommended tab delimited format. This is to preserve compatibility with commercial web log file analysis software that has been written to work with Microsoft IIS's space-delimited logs. Here is an excerpt from a real ACP server log. The entries for port 80 are from web accesses and the entries for port 21 are from FTP accesses. Note that the space delimited format makes it difficult to parse the log if there are spaces in document or directory names, and for the PORT command which has a space between the PORT and the comma delimited parameters.


#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2002-03-25 19:28:00
#Fields: time c-ip s-ip s-port cs-method cs-uri-stem sc-status
19:28:51 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /index.asp 200
19:28:51 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /acp.css 200
19:28:55 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /takeimage-simple.asp 200
19:28:55 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /acp.css 304
19:31:05 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /images/rdenny/index.asp 200
19:31:05 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /acp.css 304
19:31:13 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /images/rdenny/delfile.asp 302
19:31:14 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /images/rdenny/index.asp 200
19:31:14 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 80 GET /acp.css 304
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]USER rdenny 331
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]PASS - 230
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]REST 100 350
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]REST 0 350
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]PWD - 257
19:35:00 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]CWD / 250
19:35:04 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]CWD /images/rdenny 250
19:35:04 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]PORT 63,221,173,110,4,108 200
19:35:04 63.221.173.110 63.221.173.98 21 [3]LIST - 150

Usage Log

In addition to the server log, ACP produces a usage log. This is intended to assist in creating customer-furnished billing or usage limiting systems. Only one usage log is produced; it is not rotated like the server logs. The usage log is created in the directory specified in the Preferences, Servers tab, "Path to folder for web/FTP activity logs" field. The normal location varies between Windows versions, so just look at the setting in ACP Preferences. The usage log is called Usage.log.

The format of the usage log is tab-delimited, and each entry consists of 4 fields: (1) username, (2) full name, (3) start date/time (UTC), and (4) end date/time (UTC). The start and end date/times refer to the time when the user acquires and releases exclusive use of the observatory facilities, respectively. Thus, the length of time that is obtained by taking the difference of the two date/times is the length of time that user "owned" the facilities.

The date/time strings in the usage logs are produced in a local language dependent format that allows direct import into Microsoft Office applications such as Excel and Access, as long as the Office apps are running under the same local language-dependent format . The tab-delimited format allows direct pasting into Excel spreadsheets or Access table sheets.

Here is a sample line from the usage log (remember, this one is tab-delimited):

rdenny  Bob Denny       4/4/2002 2:32:59 PM     4/4/2002 2:33:00 PM