I've got this problem with raw logs that's wierd.

I've entered this ticket with Aletia support and in their forums:

I've got this recurring problem regarding download of raw logs. I'm surprised I've never raised it until now as it really bothers me.

Basically: how can I get last month's logs? We're only a few hours into 1st Dec but I just tried downloading (file suffixed "1130") and I only got the records for yesterday and today.

Where are my logs for the day before and the rest of last month.

It seems strange so I guess there must be a simple answer.

No reply from Aletia/Jaguar - it seems like they only pop in once a day for a thirty minute shift - but a reply in the forum said he'd also enquired and been told it simply wasn't possible to get last month's logs.

So what you have to do is wait until the last minute on the last day of the month if you want to see your full logs for a month!!! :unhappy:

Surely this cannot be true? :confused:

Is it a CPanel thing?

Most plans refer to "Raw Log" somewhere - they're not talking about an incomplete arrangement like this are they?

I really need to get my logs for November - am I asking too much? - would I be able to download with most of the other hosts?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I don't know how you'll go getting the previous months' logs if they have been wiped. Perhaps from the most recent backup? But ask for a process to be put in place that gzip's and moves your log files incrementally into your public webspace so that the space consideration is then yours to worry about. You can then download/delete your logs as necessary.

Gary

Thanks

However the responses responses I've seen have indicated they won't do that.

Is it possible to set up a cron job to do it? I've no idea if I can access the place where they are now from my shared space.

More than likely not. It depends where you are locked in to. Wouldn't hurt to ask though.

Gary

So the roundup seems to be that without a special request we lose the last few days of every month from the logs.

Is this common amongst hosts in general?

It seems ridiculous that you have to wait until exactly the right hour in the month in order to ensure that you get 99% of your logs...?

We get our IT staff to do this and they'll more than likely forget or the last two days of the month will be a weekend resulting in us losing three or four days.

This cannot be widespread - if so the big deal that Hosts make in their plans re "Access to raw logs" amounts to mis-representation doesn't it?

Originally posted by Toolz
So the roundup seems to be that without a special request we lose the last few days of every month from the logs.

If there's a process in place that removes them, I'd say so.

Gary

Is there no Cpanel setting that controls how often your logs are processed? m In Plesk, our users have the option to weekly, monthly and never delete logs. Of course we encourage everyone to delete them monthly as a busy site can generate a 100 meg access log in a month......

That would sound good to me, to be given the opportunity to not have my log wiped out every month without backup. That means I could download and delete the file every so often, and it would be up to me to parse it into separate months. Then it's MY problem, and I can deal with that.

I don't believe I can backup (for download) and delete the log file in an atomic operation, so I may delete a few uncopied log entries if it's in the middle of traffic, but missing a second of logs is one heck of a lot better than missing 2-3 days!

But in programming terms (whatever language, I don't care, I'll learn it if necessary), is there a mutual exclusion mechanism I can perform to keep out any logfile threads of the server, making them block and wait for access to the log file, so that I have time to perform my task of copying and deleting the logfile with zero risk of a race condition?

So anyway, it's a cpanel thing, huh? I figured it was either that or something else in place that Jaguar couldn't change. Because setting up a cron job to backup my log on the last day of the month is nice, but it misses the point, and is a lot more work than saying "Okay, we won't delete your log files." Hell, I could do better than the 28th of every month manually.