SARG on CentOS 6

Usually, it's pretty hard to analyze information from the squid log file. For example, I don't know how to analyze date or number of hits from /var/log/squid/access.log. If someone needs to analyze which websites are being accessed from the network, SARG may be a very good tool. SARG, or Squid Analysis Report Generator (http://sarg.sourceforge.net) analyzes the log, and generates a web based table where one can easily analyze proxy traffic.

Although SARG can be installed using YUM, I have faced problems with CentOS 6. So, I went for tarball installation instead. And believe, it's really easy unlike many tarball installtions.

So, let's start:

Time to modify the conf file 

There are a lot of options, and it is always recommended to go through them. However, we'll be editing only the ones that we need.

 


Time for a test run 

We have used to the "-x" parameter for to view detail information on the run (used for debugging). If all goes well, there should be a report generated at /var/www/html/squid-reports directory which can be accessed from the web browser using the address http://IP/squid-reports

Sarg in Browser

Now, we'd be adding a scheduled task to run SARG at 02:30 everyday.

Troubleshooting

If there is problem viewing the SARG page, here are a few tips:

1. Check whether the Firewall is blocking (iptables)
2. Check if there is a file /etc/httpd/conf.d/sarg.conf. There is a line "allow from". Modify it to suit your needs.
3. Verify  that there is directory "/var/www/html/squid-reports"