15-Minute Reviews :: ApHeMo v1.5.0.8

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on ApHeMo version 1.5.0.8 by KC Softwares – An apache error log interpreting application.

I performed a quick review of this software previously here

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“ApHeMo is a Health Monitoring analyser for the famous Apache HTTP Server. ApHeMo makes administrators able to improve security, reliability and to easily detect attacks from hackers (scans, potential backdoors…)”

Quick Pros

• Can load file from both local and FTP
• Ability to pre-filter
• Formats errors in table format
• Sorts log based on tag on error message

Quick Cons

• FTP is not SFTP or other forms of FTP protection
• Slow loading a file, even 300k
• Can not sort table columns or reorganize
• No search functionality
• No helpfile
• Does not ‘monitor’ – It is a log reader

Expansion

While I reviewed this software previously, it was a brief review so I did want to go into more depth with the review.

The use of the application is very straightforward; There isn’t many features here besides loading the file and setting up the auto filters. To get started, you head up to the ‘File’ menu, and depending on whether you’re running apache locally (or through a network share mount) or remotely via FTP. Reading my previous review, the FTP support is a new addition here and is much-needed. Once you’ve loaded the file the application proceeds to process the file, sort into the different tabs and flag all new entries with a red background (Handy to spot new entries when you refresh) – The application does save which you have marked as accepted across application sessions as well, making it harder to spot.

There are a few useful extra features as well. The ability to mark specific description entries with the autofilter is also handy to cut back on the repetitive errors such as proxy errors and so on. The table format that the application lays the information out in is fairly easy to read as well, though doesn’t alter the layout vastly from what apache provides as it is. There is also a whois lookup for when there is an IP attacked to an event as well (It’s not one-click however, as described on the author’s site).

With that said, this is about all you really can do with this application. While this is somewhat useful, especially if you’re new to apache files, for those wanting a bit more power might find some features lacking.

The FTP client, a welcome addition, is also underpowered and could be strengthened. First, programmers really need to get away from the use of straight FTP clients and instead need to look into providing some level of security to your server such as SFTP. As well, I feel the FTP functionality should be able to maintain more than one FTP connection; At minimum should be a database. I maintain a collection of apache servers and would find this quickly irritating having to re-enter the information each time.

Another note is the speed of loading the file. Even from a local point of view, it still took a about 20 seconds to load a log that was 300k. I have some logs that are larger than this and would be concerned about spending that much time (Minutes for a few megabytes?) on just loading a logfile. You might think that even refreshing would only compare old versus new and refresh the table from there, but the application just reloads the whole file into the table, taking just as long.

While the table format makes things easier to read compared to reading it through a terminal raw somewhat, the power that you’d expect from a table layout is missing. You can not reorganize the columns to make reading easier for starters; I’d prefer to have the description column first, then the date/time, then the additional information. As well, there is no sorting functionality at all, even using the column headers. First off, I’d much prefer for the order generally to go from newest to oldest, rather than having to scroll down to the end of a potentially very long list. As well, I’d like to be able to sort by description occassionally too, to see how often an error is. Better yet, I would like to see actual search or filtering options so that I can look up only errors that pertain to what I’m looking up, or research what kind of errors I got from a specific IP range as well.

One final note; While this application is called apache health monitoring software, I would not go so far as to describe this software as such; Granted, it does make the error log easier to read and does note new changes to the log when you click refresh, the whole process is manual and also does not provide features I would expect from a health monitoring title. Features that I would expect from a monitoring application would be automatic checks, possible integration into the system tray including pop-up/e-mail/SMS warmings based on specific kinds of errors coming through, and actual monitoring to see if apache is functioning and its current performance and other similar tasks.

Final Verdict

While this application does ease the reading of an apache log file and makes it quicker to flip through, it is not in my opinion a health monitoring application by any stretch of the term. It is lacking a lot of common features I would hope to see in even a log reader as well. While free, it may be a handy tool for those looking to check out your logs. As for paying $14.99 (Even though it has dropped from $30 of the original offering) for this title, I’d likely recommend to look around a bit for a better solution. For me, I’m going to stick to my scripts or tail for watching my logs, or just cracking open a good text editor.

Posted by BladedThoth on Thursday, August 30, 2007