XFERLOG(5)

✨ XFERLOG(5) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the File Formats Manual, section 5, and today's main character is xferlog — the ProFTPD server logfile. 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

xferlog — the ProFTPD server logfile 🫶

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So the xferlog file is literally where all the logging tea from the FTP server daemon, proftpd(8), gets written. 💖 It usually lives in /var/log but honestly it can be anywhere you want, because you can point at it with a proftpd(8) configuration directive. Location is a vibe, not a rule.

Every single server entry is just one line, and all the fields are separated by spaces. The shape of it is this, no cap:

current-time   transfer-time   remote-host   file-size
filename   transfer-type   special-action-flag   direction
access-mode   username   service-name   authentication-method
authenticated-user-id  completion-status

And now the field-by-field breakdown, because we are not skipping anything here:

• current-time — the current local time, formatted like "DDD MMM dd hh:mm:ss YYYY". Where DDD is the day of the week, MMM is the month, dd is the day of the month, hh is the hour, mm is the minutes, ss is the seconds, and YYYY is the year. ⏰
• transfer-time — the total time in seconds for the transfer. ⏱️
• remote-host — the remote host name. 🌐
• file-size — the size of the transferred file in bytes. 📏
• filename — the name of the transferred file. And listen: if the filename contains any spaces or control characters, each such character gets replaced by an underscore ('_') character. She gets sanitised, periodt. 🚫
• transfer-type — a single character telling you the type of transfer. Can be one of:
  • a — for an ascii transfer
  • b — for a binary transfer
• special-action-flag — one or more single character flags showing any special action that was taken. Can be one or more of:
  • C — file was compressed
  • U — file was uncompressed
  • T — file was tar'ed
  • _ — no action was taken
• direction — the direction of the transfer. Can be one of:
  • o — outgoing
  • i — incoming
  • d — deleted
• access-mode — the method by which the user is logged in. Can be one of:
  • a — (anonymous) is for an anonymous guest user.
  • r — (real) is for a local authenticated user.
• username — the local username, or if guest, the ID string given. 🪪
• service-name — the name of the service being invoked, usually FTP. 🔥
• authentication-method — the method of authentication used. Can be one of:
  • 0 — none
  • 1 — RFC931 Authentication
• authenticated-user-id — the user id returned by the authentication method. A * is used if an authenticated user id is not available. ⭐
• completion-status — a single character showing the status of the transfer. Can be one of:
  • c — complete transfer
  • i — incomplete transfer

🦋 FILES 🦋

• /var/log/xferlog

👑 AUTHORS 👑

ProFTPD is written and maintained by a number of people, full credits can be found on http://www.proftpd.org/credits.html — shoutout to the whole squad fr fr. 🙌

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• proftpd(8)
• Full documentation on ProFTPD, including configuration and FAQs, is available at http://www.proftpd.org/
• For help/support, try the ProFTPD mailing lists, detailed on http://www.proftpd.org/lists.html
• Report bugs at http://bugs.proftpd.org/

and that's the whole page, bestie — XFERLOG(5), from the File Formats Manual, written and maintained by the ProFTPD girlies themselves 🎀 that's a wrap, slay, go log something iconic ✨💖