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Valid for Web Hosting and Managed Dedicated Servers.
This article provides information on obtaining website log files.
Web hosting contracts purchased before September 15, 2025
Log data can be found in the logs directory of your webspace. The files access.log.KW.gz contain logs for previous weeks. The files access.log.CW.D.gz contain logs for the current week.
CW stands for calendar week.
D stands for day (starting with 1 for Monday to 7 for Sunday).
.gz means that the file has been compressed to save space.
The logs for the current day are updated almost in real time. Due to the large amount of data, log data is kept for a maximum of 8 weeks.
The access statistics (directory /logs) are not added to your storage space. There is therefore no need to delete this folder in order to gain more storage space.
Note
Due to data protection guidelines on personal data, the IP addresses of the visitors are anonymised in the log files.
Logging of the IP address for page views via a proxy server
If websites are accessed via a proxy, it establishes a connection to the desired website and forwards it to you. Proxy servers are used, for example, at the interface between company networks and the Internet, but also by access providers.
The proxy server functions as a proxy, so to speak, requesting the pages and forwarding them to the user. Consequently, the log file contains the IP address of the proxy and not the address of the workstation computer that originally requested the page.
Some proxies send a header field called X-Forwarded-For, in which the original IP is entered, so that it is possible to trace where a request originally came from when it is accessed via proxies. This X-Forwarded-For header is appended to the end of each entry in the log file at Web Hosting.
When using the IONOS SSL proxy, the IP address of the actual requesting computer is entered in the last column of each log line. This improves the possibility of creating meaningful visitor statistics.
Downloading log files
You can find instructions on how to download log files in the article Downloading web server log files.
Web hosting contracts purchased from September 15, 2025
You can access the log files via SSH. To establish an SSH connection, you need a device with an SSH client installed. For computers running Windows, we recommend the program PuTTY. Download PuTTY.
Instructions on how to establish an SSH connection to your web space can be found in the following article: Connecting to Your Webspace via Secure Shell (SSH) using PuTTY.
Launch your SSH client and connect to your webspace. A terminal window with the Linux command line will open.
To display the last 10 lines of the log file in real time, enter the following command:
log-tail
Each entry contains a timestamp, the hostname, the process name, and the log message. The log messages provide information about the type of event that occurred. This could be, for example, a successful login, a connection establishment, or a website call (GET request). Example:
suXXXXX@www:~$ log-tail
82.xxx.xxx.160 - - [04/Sep/2025:12:00:00 +0200] „GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 50996 – „Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0” 1149455
82.xxx.xxx.160 - - [05/Aug/2025:12:50:30 +0200] „GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1” 302 0 „https://home-5018236593.webspace-host.com/” „Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0" 32023
To view the entire contents of a log file, enter the log-cat command:
log-cat
Each entry is displayed with a timestamp, hostname, process name, and log message. Example:
82.xxx.xxx.167 - - [05/Aug/2025:12:51:23 +0200] „GET / HTTP/1.1” 200 50988 - „Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0" 375106
82.xxx.xxx.167 - - [05/Aug/2025:12:51:57 +0200] „GET / HTTP/1.1” 500 531 – „Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:141.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/141.0” 4991
[05/Aug/2025:12:51:57 +0200] [Client 82.165.232.167:0] /home/www/public/.htaccess: Invalid command 'udghuifodhdfouh', possibly misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration.
The output can contain both successful accesses (lines 1 and 2) and error messages (line 3), which differ in format.
Note
The log files record both accesses and error messages, which can appear differently.