Log File Analysis on OS X?

November 2, 2006 7:04 AM

What software do people currently recommend using to do web log analysis on OS X?

I am hip to Google Analytics and am currently using it on a couple of sites, and it's great - but not for everything. I download my raw log files regularly and there are times when I like to be able to run very customized reports focusing on a particular file or directory or something very specific like that.

I have been using the OS X port of Analog with Analog Helper for years on and off, but I was wondering if there were another, better alternative out there that I haven't noticed yet. I would prefer something with nicer-looking output and that didn't eat up close to 100% of CPU while running.

posted by mikel to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I asked this about two weeks ago. I found that the easiest method, sadly, was Weblog Expert on Windows.
posted by dance at 7:19 AM on November 2, 2006

Summary works really well for me: http://summary.net/upgrade.html
posted by clango at 7:24 AM on November 2, 2006

We use AWStats on our production webservers (which happen to be Xservers); if you don't mind mucking around on the command line a bit, the output is hard to beat.
posted by Remy at 8:05 AM on November 2, 2006

In order to avoid the 100% takeover of your cpu, look into the "nice" command, which gives tasks a lower priority. They'll only use the cpu if you don't otherwise need it. "man nice" from Terminal.app should tell you all about it.
posted by metajack at 8:56 AM on November 2, 2006

Second awstats.

AWStats website.
posted by drstein at 11:46 AM on November 3, 2006

Splunk is the best way to analyze log files on OSX. It is a free install, for up to 500MB / day of log volume. It works great for your weblogs, but it will also provide valuable information for you other Mac logs that are generated by your system.

Download it from http://www.splunk.com/
posted by benstraw at 5:29 PM on November 3, 2006