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Question

what does the apache log mean?

  • Posted January 23, 2015

There is a apache log record .

::1 - - [23/Jan/2015:04:19:14 +0000] “OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0” 200 126 “-” “Apache/2.2.22 (Debian) (internal dummy connection)”

what does ::1 mean here? what does OPTIONS * mean here? what does Apache/2.2.22 (Debian) (internal dummy connection) mean here?

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Andrew SB • January 23, 2015

::1 is the IPv6 loop-back interface, meaning the connection is coming from the server itself. From the Apache documentation:

When the Apache HTTP Server manages its child processes, it needs a way to wake up processes that are listening for new connections. To do this, it sends a simple HTTP request back to itself. This request will appear in the access_log file with the remote address set to the loop-back interface (typically 127.0.0.1 or ::1 if IPv6 is configured). If you log the User-Agent string (as in the combined log format), you will see the server signature followed by “(internal dummy connection)” on non-SSL servers. During certain periods you may see up to one such request for each httpd child process.

These requests are perfectly normal and you do not, in general, need to worry about them. They can simply be ignored.

In order to filter these from the log files, you can add the following to your Apche configuration:

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr "::1" dontlog