One of the first things we do when we setup a new macOS Caching Server is to check the logs to see if it’s actually serving content. You can view thee logs at /Library/Server/Caching/Logs/Debug.log. In the log, when a Caching Server has registered for your network, you’ll see a line that begins with the following:
Got request for host = http://swcdn.apple.com/
This above means that the server actually got a request (as it says) and that the request is for an asset at swcdn.apple.com (followed by the actual package path). Once found, the server caches the asset, which starts with the following:
Initializing asset handler for http://swcdn.apple.com/
The path would then match the same asset along with a path=(followed by the path to the asset on your server).
You’ll then see some information and ultimately a list of the number of bytes served from the cache, as well as the number of downloads. If that sits at 0 the server isn’t really doing anything…
