Question

The following bash script sends an email with the PHP error logs for each day.

#!/bin/bash
 
# phperrlog v1.0
# by vladimir prelovac http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/
#
# parse error logs on your server and send you daily updates to email
  
# configure options
  EMAIL="[e-mail]"
   
  WORKDIR="/var/scripts"
  TAIL=50  # number of entries to send
 # IGNORE="/backup" # path to ignore
    
# script starts 'ere
     
 cd $WORKDIR
 rm phperrlog.txt 2>/dev/null
      
 LIST=$(ls /var/log/apache2/*-error.log)
 today=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
       
 for i in $LIST
  do
    if [ -f $i ]; then
       time=$(date -r $i +%F)
       if [ "$time" == "$today" ]; then
         echo $i >>phperrlog.txt
         echo "---------------------------------" >>phperrlog.txt
         tail -n $TAIL $i >>phperrlog.txt
         echo -e "\n\n\n\n" >>phperrlog.txt
       fi
    fi
 done
                                              
  if [ -f  phperrlog.txt ]; then
    mail -s "PHPERRORLOG SCRIPT: server error logs - $today" $EMAIL  < phperrlog.txt
  fi

How can I modify this script so that it excludes all errors similar to this:

[Thu Aug 02 10:54:33 2012] [error] [client 12.345.67.89] Directory
index forbidden by Options directive:
/var/www/domain/public/templates/img/

[Thu Aug 02 11:25:35 2012] [error] [client 12.345.67.89] client denied
by server configuration:
/var/www/domain/public/templates/sidebar.tpl

I am more interested in the:

• PHP Notice/Warning/Fatal Errors
• File does not exist

Answer 1

grep can read patterns from a file

 -f file, --file=file
         Read one or more newline separated patterns from file.  Empty
         pattern lines match every input line.  Newlines are not considered
         part of a pattern.  If file is empty, nothing is matched.

In your case you have to decide whether you want to use a whitelist (list of patterns you want to see in your report) or blacklist (list of pattern you don’t want to see). Once you have collected the relevant patterns replace tail -n $TAIL $i >>phperrlog.txt with

grep -f /path/to/whitelist.txt "$i" | tail -n ${TAIL:-50} >> phperrlog.txt

or

grep -v -f /path/to/blacklist.txt "$i" | tail -n ${TAIL:-50} >> phperrlog.txt

I would probably start with a blacklist and add additional patterns to it over time when I notice lines I don’t want to see anymore. An initial blacklist could contain

Directory index forbidden by Options directive
client denied by server configuration

to mach your samples.