Parse the Log File

awk, sed, cut, sort, uniq — extract stats from server logs like a data engineer.

A intermediate Linux challenge worth 10 points. Solve it hands-on in a real Linux environment in your browser - no local setup, no fake shells.

The Challenge

Scenario: Monday morning ops report. The manager wants web traffic stats from last night.

The file /tmp/logs/access.log is a standard nginx access log.

Your tasks:

1. Count total requests per HTTP method (GET, POST, etc.) → save to /tmp/method_counts.txt (format: "count METHOD")
2. Extract all unique client IP addresses, sorted → save to /tmp/unique_ips.txt
3. Find the top 5 most requested URLs → save to /tmp/top_urls.txt (format: "count /path")

Commands to learn: awk, cut, sort, uniq -c, head, sed

Run check when done.