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6. Squid Log Files

The logs are a valuable source of information about Squid workloads and performance. The logs record not only access information, but also system configuration errors and resource consumption (eg, memory, disk space).

6.1 access.log

There are basically two formats for the access.log file: ``native'' and ``common.'' The Common Logfile Format is used by numerous HTTP servers. This format consists of the following seven fields:

        remotehost rfc931 authuser [date] "method URL" status bytes

The native format is different for different major versions of Squid. For Squid-1.0 it is:

        time elapsed remotehost code/status/peerstatus bytes method URL

For Squid-1.1, the information from the hierarchy.log was moved into access.log. The format is:

        time elapsed remotehost code/status bytes method URL rfc931 peerstatus/peerhost

6.2 hierarchy.log

This logfile exists for Squid-1.0 only. The format is

        [date] URL peerstatus peerhost

6.3 store.log

The store.log consists of the following fields:

    time       The time this entry was logged.  The value is the
               raw Unix time plus milliseconds.

    action     One of RELEASE, SWAPIN, or SWAPOUT.
               RELEASE means the object has been removed from the cache.
               SWAPOUT means the object has been saved to disk.
               SWAPIN  means the object existed on disk and has been
                       swapped into memory.

    status     The HTTP reply code.

    The following three fields are timestamps parsed from the HTTP
    reply headers.  All are expressed in Unix time.  A missing header
    is represented with -2 and an unparsable header is represented as -1.

    datehdr    The value of the HTTP Date: reply header.

    lastmod    The value of the HTTP Last-Modified: reply header.

    expires    The value of the HTTP Expires: reply header.

    type       The HTTP Content-Type reply header.

    expect-len The value of the HTTP Content-Length reply header.
               Zero if Content-Length was missing.

    real-len   The number of bytes of content actually read.  If the
               expect-len is non-zero, and not equal to the real-len,
               the object will be released from the cache.

    method     HTTP request method

    key        The cache key.  Often this is simply the URL.  Cache objects
               which never become public will have cache keys that include
               a unique integer sequence number, the request method, and
               then the URL.

6.4 Field Definitions

These are the definitions for the various log format components:

remotehost

The IP address of the client host. In Squid-1.1, if the log_fqdn option is enabled, full hostnames will be logged when available.

rfc931

The username associated with the client connection, determined from an Ident (RFC 931) server running on the client host. By default Ident lookups are not made, but may be enabled with the ident_lookup option.

authuser

Always NULL ("-") for Squid logs.

method

GET, HEAD, POST, etc. for HTTP requests. ICP_QUERY for ICP requests.

URL

The requested URL.

code

The ``cache result'' of the request. This describes if the request was a cache hit or miss, and if the object was refreshed. See the full list of cache result codes.

status

HTTP status code: 200 for successful actions, 000 for UDP requests, 403 for redirects, 500 for server errors, etc. See the HTTP status codes for a complete list.

bytes

The number of bytes delivered to the client.

peerstatus

A status code that explains how the request was forwarded, either too your peer (neighbor) caches, or directly to the origin server.

peerhost

The host where the request was forwarded to.

time

Unix timestamp (since Jan 1, 1970) with millisecond resolution. You can convert unix time to something more sensible with this short perl script:

        #!/usr/bin/perl -p
        s/^\d+\.\d+/localtime $&/e;

date

HTTP date format: dd/mmm/yyyy:hh:mm:ss TZ-offset

elapsed

The time elapsed (milliseconds) during the client connection. For HTTP requests, this is the time between the accept() and close() system calls for the TCP socket. For ICP requests, this represents the time between scheduling the reply message for sending and actually sending it.

6.5 Cache Result Codes

TCP_ codes

Note, TCP_ refers to requests on the HTTP port (3128).

TCP_HIT

A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache.

TCP_MEM_HIT

A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache, AND it was in memory so it did not have to be read from disk.

TCP_NEGATIVE_HIT

The request was for a negatively-cached object. Negative-caching refers to caching certain types of errors, such as "404 Not Found." The amount of time these errors are cached is controlled with the negative_ttl configuration parameter.

TCP_MISS

The requested object was not in the cache.

TCP_REFRESH_HIT

The object was in the cache, but STALE. An If-Modified-Since request was made and a "304 Not Modified" reply was received.

TCP_REF_FAIL_HIT

The object was in the cache, but STALE. The request to validate the object failed, so the old (stale) object was returned.

TCP_REFRESH_MISS

The object was in the cache, but STALE. An If-Modified-Since request was made and the reply contained new content.

TCP_CLIENT_REFRESH

The client issued a request with the "no-cache" pragma.

TCP_IMS_HIT

The client issued an If-Modified-Since request and the object was in the cache and still fresh.

TCP_IMS_MISS

The client issued an If-Modified-Since request for a stale object.

TCP_SWAPFAIL

The object was believed to be in the cache, but could not be accessed.

TCP_DENIED

Access was denied for this request

UDP_ codes

"UDP_" refers to requests on the ICP port (3130)

UDP_HIT

A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache.

UDP_HIT_OBJ

Same as UDP_HIT, but the object data was small enough to be sent in the UDP reply packet. Saves the following TCP request.

UDP_MISS

The requested object was not in the cache.

UDP_DENIED

Access was denied for this request.

UDP_INVALID

An invalid request was received.

UDP_RELOADING

The ICP request was "refused" because the cache is busy reloading its metadata.

ERR_ codes

"ERR_" refers to various types of errors for HTTP requests. For example:

ERR_CLIENT_ABORT

The client aborted its request.

ERR_NO_CLIENTS

There are no clients requesting this URL any more.

ERR_READ_ERROR

There was a read(2) error while retrieving this object.

ERR_CONNECT_FAIL

Squid failed to connect to the server for this request.

6.6 Peer Status Codes

Hierarchy Data Tags

DIRECT

The object has been requested from the origin server.

FIREWALL_IP_DIRECT

The object has been requested from the origin server because the origin host IP address is inside your firewall.

FIRST_PARENT_MISS

The object has been requested from the parent cache with the fastest weighted round trip time.

FIRST_UP_PARENT

The object has been requested from the first available parent in your list.

LOCAL_IP_DIRECT

The object has been requested from the origin server because the origin host IP address matched your 'local_ip' list.

SIBLING_HIT

The object was requested from a sibling cache which replied with a UDP_HIT.

NO_DIRECT_FAIL

The object could not be requested because of firewall restrictions and no parent caches were available.

NO_PARENT_DIRECT

The object was requested from the origin server because no parent caches exist for the URL.

PARENT_HIT

The object was requested from a parent cache which replied with a UDP_HIT.

SINGLE_PARENT

The object was requested from the only parent cache appropriate for this URL.

SOURCE_FASTEST

The object was requested from the origin server because the 'source_ping' reply arrived first.

PARENT_UDP_HIT_OBJ

The object was received in a UDP_HIT_OBJ reply from a parent cache.

SIBLING_UDP_HIT_OBJ

The object was received in a UDP_HIT_OBJ reply from a sibling cache.

PASSTHROUGH_PARENT

The neighbor or proxy defined in the config option 'passthrough_proxy' was used.

SSL_PARENT_MISS

The neighbor or proxy defined in the config option 'ssl_proxy' was used.

DEFAULT_PARENT

No ICP queries were sent to any parent caches. This parent was chosen because it was marked as 'default' in the config file.

ROUNDROBIN_PARENT

No ICP queries were received from any parent caches. This parent was chosen because it was marked as 'default' in the config file and it had the lowest round-robin use count.

CLOSEST_PARENT_MISS

This parent was selected because it included the lowest RTT measurement to the origin server. This only appears with 'query_icmp on' set in the config file.

CLOSEST_DIRECT

The object was fetched directly from the origin server because this cache measured a lower RTT than any of the parent caches.

Almost any of these may be preceded by 'TIMEOUT_' if the two-second (default) timeout occurs waiting for all ICP replies to arrive from neighbors.

6.7 HTTP status codes

These are taken from RFC 2068.

100  Continue
101  Switching Protocols
200  OK
201  Created
202  Accepted
203  Non-Authoritative Information
204  No Content
205  Reset Content
206  Partial Content
300  Multiple Choices
301  Moved Permanently
302  Moved Temporarily
303  See Other
304  Not Modified
305  Use Proxy
400  Bad Request
401  Unauthorized
402  Payment Required
403  Forbidden
404  Not Found
405  Method Not Allowed
406  Not Acceptable
407  Proxy Authentication Required
408  Request Time-out
409  Conflict
410  Gone
411  Length Required
412  Precondition Failed
413  Request Entity Too Large
414  Request-URI Too Large
415  Unsupported Media Type
500  Internal Server Error
501  Not Implemented
502  Bad Gateway
503  Service Unavailable
504  Gateway Time-out
505  HTTP Version not supported

6.8 cache/log or swap.state

This file has a rather unfortunate name. It also is often called the swap log. It is a record of every cache object written to disk. It is read when Squid starts up to ``reload'' the cache. If you remove this file when squid is NOT running, you will effectively wipe out your cache contents. If you remove this file while squid IS running, you can easily recreate it. The safest way is to simply shutdown the running process:

        % squid -k shutdown
This will disrupt service, but at least you will have your swap log back. Alternatively, you can tell squid to rotate its log files. This also causes a clean swap log to be written.
        % squid -k rotate

For Squid-1.1, there are six fields:

  1. fileno: The swap file number holding the object data. This is mapped to a pathname on your filesystem.
  2. timestamp: This is the time when the object was last verified to be current. The time is a hexadecimal representation of Unix time.
  3. expires: This is the value of the Expires header in the HTTP reply. If an Expires header was not present, this will be -2 or fffffffe. If the Expires header was present, but invalid (unparsable), this will be -1 or ffffffff.
  4. lastmod: Value of the HTTP reply Last-Modified header. If missing it will be -2, if invalid it will be -1.
  5. size: Size of the object, including headers.
  6. url: The URL naming this object.

For Squid-2, this log file has been renamed to swap.state, and the format is binary.

6.9 Which log files can I delete safely?

The best way to maintain Squid log files is to send the squid process a USR1 signal. This causes the current log files to be closed and renamed. You can then remove any of the old log files. For example, if your squid.pid file is /usr/local/squid/logs/squid.pid (as defined in your squid.conf file) you would do:

        kill -USR1 `cat /usr/local/squid/logs/squid.pid`

NOTE: The logfile_rotate line in squid.conf makes it generally unnecessary to delete logfiles by hand. Just set logfile_rotate to the number of old logs you want saved. Each time the value of logfile_rotate is reached, the oldest log will be deleted automatically. You may find it useful to simply set logfile_rotate to the number of old logs you want, and then set up a crontab to send squid the SIGUSR1 signal. The following crontab entry would tell Squid to rotate the logs every day at midnight:

        0 0 * * * /bin/kill -USR1 `cat /usr/local/squid/logs/squid.pid`

The only logfile you should never delete is the file cleverly named log which normally exists in the first cache_dir directory. This file contains the meta data needed to rebuild the cache when squid starts up. Deleting this file effectively wipes out your cache.

6.10 How can I disable Squid's log files?

To disable access.log:

        cache_access_log /dev/null

To disable store.log:

        cache_store_log none

It is a bad idea to disable the cache.log because this file contains many important status and debugging messages. However, if you really want to, you can: To disable access.log:

        cache_log /dev/null

6.11 My log files get very big!

You need to rotate your log files with a cron job. For example:

        0 0 * * * /usr/local/squid/bin/squid -k rotate

6.12 Why do I get ERR_NO_CLIENTS_BIG_OBJ messages so often?

This message means that the requested object was in ``Delete Behind'' mode and the user aborted the transfer. An object will go into ``Delete Behind'' mode if

6.13 What does ERR_LIFETIME_EXP mean?

This means that a timeout occurred while the object was being transferred. Most likely the retrieval of this object was very slow (or it stalled before finishing) and the user aborted the request. However, depending on your settings for quick_abort, Squid may have continued to try retrieving the object. Squid imposes a maximum amount of time on all open sockets, so after some amount of time the stalled request was aborted and logged win an ERR_LIFETIME_EXP message.

6.14 Retrieving ``lost'' files from the cache

I've been asked to retrieve an object which was accidentally destroyed at the source for recovery. So, how do I figure out where the things are so I can copy them out and strip off the headers?

The following method applies only to the Squid-1.1 versions:

Use grep to find the named object (Url) in the cache/log file. The first field in this file is an integer file number.

Then, find the file fileno-to-pathname.pl from the ``scripts'' directory of the Squid source distribution. The usage is

        perl fileno-to-pathname.pl [-c squid.conf]
file numbers are read on stdin, and pathnames are printed on stdout.


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