ezproxy.log files record information about all URLs that are proxied during the course of a user's session. This can include data about the images on the webpage or other multimedia elements. Some institutions may choose not to record this information to decrease the size of their ezproxy.log files.
Including the LogFilter directive can help to refine the data in the logs and minimize the retention of data that you are not interested in recording. The LogFilter directive allows EZproxy administrators to limit the quantity and type of data collected in ezproxy.log and improve their ability to gather the details they want to know about how their remote users access resources using EZproxy.
LogFilter is a position-independent config.txt directive that directs EZproxy to discard information about URLs with certain types of files instead of recording that data to the ezproxy.log. It is repeatable and can be entered with as many separate variables as you wish to filter out of ezproxy.log. In the absence of this directive, EZproxy records all URLs that are accessed by a user to ezproxy.log.
Caution: The wildcard statements in these directive lines are important because they direct EZproxy to look for any URL that contains the identified element. If you try to use a line without the * wildcard, such as the following nothing will be filtered, since EZproxy will compare the entire URL to just .gif, and find that they do not match.
LogFilter .gif
The basic format for LogFilter is:
LogFilter *.gif* LogFilter *.jpg*
Where the * wildcard is included to look for matches of 0 or more characters. It is placed at the beginning and the end of the pattern so that any URL containing, in this case, .gif or .jpg will be discarded and not recorded to ezproxy.log. This is especially important when filtering references to any element that could include extra information after their extension.
The application of LogFilters will vary from institution to institution. Some institutions may be interested in tracking all data transferred through EZproxy, and these institutions will not implement any LogFilters. However, if your institution does not require that you filter all data transfers, and you would like to limit the information recorded in your ezproxy logs, you might consider implementing LogFilters to remove some of the following files types.
If you do not have any resources that contain image files as an item to be accessed, you may decide to filter image files using the following directives:
LogFilter *.gif* LogFilter *.jpg* LogFilter *.png*
Another filetype that some institutions may choose not to record in logs is CSS files, which can be filtered with the following directive:
LogFilter *.CSS*
Any filetype can be removed from inclusion in the ezproxy logs by substituting that file type in the directive statement as shown above.