How to monitor incoming http requests

Question

How can I monitor incoming HTTP requests to port 80? I have set up web hosting on my local machine using DynDNS and Nginx. I wanted to know how many request are made on my server every day.

Currently I'm using this command:

netstat -an | grep 80

Answer 1

Do you have log files turned on for your server? If you do, I'd recommend installing AwStats and running your log files with it to get accurate reporting.

If you want to just monitor all incoming/outgoing traffic, you can use WireShark.

Answer 2

You may use tcpdump.

# tcpdump filter for HTTP GET 
sudo tcpdump -s 0 -A 'tcp[((tcp[12:1] & 0xf0) >> 2):4] = 0x47455420'

# tcpdump filter for HTTP POST 
sudo tcpdump -s 0 -A 'tcp dst port 80 and (tcp[((tcp[12:1] & 0xf0) >> 2):4] = 0x504f5354)'

For a solution using tshark see:

http://serverfault.com/questions/84750/monitoring-http-traffic-using-tcpdump

Answer 3

You can also tail the log file:

tail -f /path/to/access_log

The -f parameter will cause tail to continually update the screen as new entries are written to the log.