In an attempt to piggyback on the people's vague fear of random lawsuits in Germany, I'll blog on how to remove the last octet of an IP in NGINX log files.
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You first have to define a log format and then use it wherever you see fit. To define the log format, you use the `log_format` directive. This directive - according to the manual - is only allowed in `http` context. So for an NGINX default setup, you can put the following in your `/etc/nginx/nginx.conf` within the curly brackets of `http`:
```
map $remote_addr $ip_anonym1 {
default 0.0.0;
"~(?P<ip>(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+))\.\d+" $ip;
"~(?P<ip>[^:]+:[^:]+):" $ip;
}
map $remote_addr $ip_anonym2 {
default .0;
"~(?P<ip>(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+))\.\d+" .0;
"~(?P<ip>[^:]+:[^:]+):" ::;
}
map $ip_anonym1$ip_anonym2 $ip_anonymized {
default 0.0.0.0;
"~(?P<ip>.*)" $ip;
}
log_format anonymized '$ip_anonymized - $remote_user [$time_local] '
'"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent '
'"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent"';
```
**Important** (mentioning it, mainly because I fell for it): Make sure that you put it *before* the line `include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;`.
From now on you can specify this log format in the end of every `access_log` directive.
```
access_log /var/log/nginx/www.google.com_access.log anonymized;
```
Some random thoughts to conclude this blag post: I'm with [XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1998/) on this one. People are going crazy about DS-GVO. And imho the new regulation are not meant for John Doe who is hosting his blog with three visitors a week. No Public Authority (TM) will go after him.
There still is the fear of rogue lawyers roaming the Internet to do something that one could call *Abmahnung mit Vergleichsangebot*, of course. Such a thing feels a lot like a formalized (and legal!) blackmail: you get a "you are doing something wrong and I'm going to sue you, but you can give me money and I'll not do that"-letter.
But when you do stuff (with your life) this can happen all the time! So you decide: curl up in a ball of fur with no Internet access or tell those damn lawyers to bring it on?!