Generate advanced web server access statistics...

TheLinker

:!: An updated version of this article can be found here.
Some months ago I was involved in a project to help out a web administrator analyzing his Apache log files. We ended up using AWStats, a great web server log analyzer, which shows all possible information from the web server log. A few days ago I tested AWStats on the log files generated by Abyss, and this worked out just fine... after some minor adjustment to the Abyss configuration.
AWStats is a perl script and can be run in CGI mode and from command line. The following preparation needs to be done before you install and configure AWStats...:
1. Download the latest stable version from http://awstats.sourceforge.net/. At this time it is version 4.1.
2. Make sure you have configured Abyss to run perl script, as described on http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/perl.html.
3. Open the Abyss Console and go to Server Configuration > Advanced > Server Parameters. Set Extended Logging Format to Yes.
4. Delete your current Abyss log files, as you need to get access information in the extended logging format.
Now it's time to install AWStats. In this example I unzip the awstats41.zip archive to my C:\ drive. Inside C:\awstats, you should see 3 directories... docs, tools and wwwroot. Do the following within your C:\awstats directory...:
1. Create 2 new directories, called data and www.
2. Move the directory wwwroot/icon to the new www/ directory. Also move the contents of the wwwroot/cgi-bin/ directory to the new www/ directory.
In your new C:\awstats\www directory, you should see the following directories and files...: icon, lang, lib, awstats.pl and awstats.model.conf.
Now it's time to make a configuration for your site. The next message will tell you how...

TheLinker

I am not an expert in all the configuration details on AWStats, so I'll just describe the basics.
Make a copy of the file awstats.model.conf and call it awstats.mysite.no-ip.com.conf. Change the mysite.no-ip.com part of the filename to what your site name is... e.g. awstats.www.mysite.com.conf. It's just a filename, so don't worry about the site name being registered.
Open the newnamed conf file in your favourite notepad editor. Look for the following sections in the file, and change accordingly:
LogFile= Set this to the location of your log file... e.g.
LogFile="C:/Program Files/Abyss Web Server/log/access.log"
LogFormat=1 , Remember we changed the log format for Abyss. This is why.
DirData="C:/awstats/data" , Storage directory for statistical data. This is where the new data directory is in use.
DirCgi="/awstats" , We need to make an alias later.
SiteDomain= , Set this to your site name... e.g.
SiteDomain="mysite.no-ip.com"
AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=1 , This makes it possible to update the statistics from the web. Read the notes for this switch.
Save the conf file, and keep on reading for the final instructions... 🙂

TheLinker

Now we need to make this perl script accessible from the web. Open the Abyss Console and go to Server Configuration > Advanced > Aliases. Create a new alias, where virtual path is /awstats and real path is c:\awstats\www. It's time to access the statistics for the first time.
Open your web browser and enter: http://mysite.no-ip.com/awstats/awstats.pl?config=mysite.no-ip.com. You must of course enter your site name, and the name of your conf file. In the page being generated, you should see a link called Update now. Click this link to update the statistical data.
Because you deleted your current log file, you will not see much data for now. But if your site is frequently visited, you will soon see alot of information about your visitors.
As I wrote earlier, I'm not an expert on AWStats. Read the included documentation and conduct your own experiments with the conf files.
Best of regards... 8)

aprelium

Great article :idea: Thank you for taking the time to write it and make it available to other users 😃

bhorst

The Linker:
I just wanted to say thanks! It worked like a charm. Any other suggestions, keep them coming. 🙂

Anonymous

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aprelium

a_FREEbie_Webmaster wrote
Oh!, and even many'er thanks to people like APRELIUM for making things like Abyss for windows. Not only Linux can have great and VERY cheap software. I bow my head and look forward (!) to the new versions to see what you can stuff into this piece of usefull software !!

Thank you for choosing Abyss Web Server and thank you for believing in its capabilities. We are really very pleased when we read such encouraging words 😃

Anonymous

I think i got this working - it works from a batch file, but when i try the abyss webserver it gives me an error:
Error: LogFile parameter is not defined in config/domain file
Setup ('awstats.rchan.myftp.org.conf' file, web server or permissions) may be wrong.
I'm not sure what i've done wrong. The "allow updates from web brower" thing is = 1, so i don't think it's that. If i'm just a special case, i'll just stick to my batch.

DLashley

Ok, I configured and installed it ok, and it works. I got the same error (images not showing up), so I used aliases as suggested above, but the images at the stop still aren't showing up.
I probably need to use different aliases, but I don't know what to put.
By the way, thanks very much for this! This is just what I was looking for! 😃

DLashley

On second thought, it's not working. It doesn't generate stats for me when I click the update button, and I've got hits.
Oh well, sigh... 🙁

chance

Has anybody got this to work? Have followed instructionss and can get everything to work EXCEPT the Icons. Tried the icon alias thingy, no go. When I bring AWstats up in my browser (IE 5.5) it hangs on any one (not consistant) of the icons.
Since no icons are displayed, they all are recorded as 404s in the log. Trying to set this up 2300+ errors are now in the log. Abyss works fine but the stats program generates its own errors.
Since this thread has been dead for a week, does that mean everybody has figured it out or just given up?
This is my first try at cgi, perl, whatever and so far I am a resounding failure. Any help would be appreciated.
Abyss is great. I can understand the instructions no sweat. Cheers
os w2k pro

tgif

the icon aliases trick is good
but there is a mistake:
it's not
/icons
awstats\www\icons
but
/icon
awstats\www\icon
!!
i just took of "s" and it worked perfectly!!

Gatewayy

it works perfectly on my site:
http://gatewayy.is-a-geek.net/awstats/awstats.pl?config=gatewayy.is-a-geek.net
make sure you click refresh to update the page 🙂

genechan

I considered AWStats, but want to avoid having to install Perl after having already struggled through installing PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin already. I found serverStats (from http://www.snippetlibrary.com/viewzip.php?siteid=491), which uses PHP and MySQL, and after much fiddling, got it running to the point of it reading Abyss' access.log file. Even after ensuring that access.log was in "Extended" format, serverStats still wasn't able to properly process it -- for some reason, its temporary work file (created by parsing access.log) has every second line = " % %", which causes serverStats to croak.
I'm ready to look for another Web server log analyzer, one that uses PHP and MySQL. Suggestions, please?
Edit: [June 23] By the way, I would prefer a tool that analyzes the Web server log (access.log) rather than requiring the addition of code to every Web page on my server.

os17fan

I THINK IM GOING TO TRY THIS OUT , Aprelium , can you send me your mailing list program for my server 😃

aprelium

os17fan wrote
I THINK IM GOING TO TRY THIS OUT , Aprelium , can you send me your mailing list program for my server 😃

We use Majordomo (freely available) but it is very hard to setup.

tbog_yang

thx you
it work like a charm 8)

Kinjite

I followed the txt and everything comes up NEVER UPDATED. Have any Ideas on how to fix this?????????

AwPhuch

Webalizer works wonders on Abyss!!!
http://awphuch.no-ip.com:1079/usage
Also there is a version of it that will run on a windows box as well
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/download.html
Just download the zip file, read the Installation howto and it will work every time...then all you have to do is create a task manager tab and bamo...your up an running in no time.
Brian
AwPhuch