Urchin Q and A: Processing Log Files

Question:

Urchin processes my log file as one long line. Why?

Answer:

This problem usually arises when the web server and Urchin are running on different operating systems. For example, if your web server is running on Mac OS 9 and Urchin is running on a Windows based OS then Urchin may read the log file as one long line. The problem is that each operating system uses a different character to represent a new line.

The new line character on Unix type systems (including OS X) is a line feed (\n). Windows uses a carriage return and a line feed (\r\n) for a new line. To make things even more interesting Mac OS 9 uses just a carriage return (\r).

To solve this problem you need to re-process your log file with some type of script (PERL, shell, etc) that replaces the new line character at the end of each log file line with a character consistent with the operating system that Urchin is running on.