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Find the most frequent 404 errors in the access log

harmless rootLogsdebian, ubuntu
Adjust the values, the command updates live
root@server
awk '$9 == 404 {print $7}' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20

Filters all requests with status 404 and lists the 20 most frequent paths. Useful after a relaunch to find missing redirects, or to see which files bots are probing for. Many hits on wp-login.php or .env on non-WordPress sites are typical of scanners.

Also searched as

  • which pages return 404
  • find not found urls in access log
  • find broken links in log
  • analyze 404 errors apache

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Analyze Googlebot requests in the access log

#grep -i "googlebot" /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
harmlessLogs

Analyze server errors (5xx) in the access log

#awk '$9 ~ /^5[0-9][0-9]$/ {print $9, $7}' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
harmlessLogs

Count HTTP status codes in the access log

#awk '{print $9}' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
harmlessLogs

Count requests per minute in the access log

#awk '{print substr($4, 2, 17)}' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
harmlessLogs

Filter the access log by time range

#awk -v von="09/Oct/2026:14:00" -v bis="09/Oct/2026:15:00" 'substr($4, 2) >= von && substr($4, 2) < bis' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log
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Find the most common user agents and bots in the access log

#awk -F'"' '{print $6}' /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/logs/access_ssl_log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
harmlessLogs

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