Void's Forums

Just a quick question, I wonder if anyone here might know the answer?

I have 3 sites gosted with 2 different hosting companies, neither of the companies appears to offer a web stats service that I can open to the public.

What I mean by this is that on one ofthe sites at least I would like to have a link to webalizer much the same as Void Main has on his front page.
http://voidmain.is-a-geek.net/stats/

The site I would really like this feature on is just a 'test' site that is hosted with my ISP, they do actually use webalizer for looking at the stats but it has an address along the lins of
https://secure.freedom2surf.net/service ... /index.php
this page then requires me to log in using my ISP username and password.

Does anyone know how I can offer a public stats service on a server that is not my own?

I have emailed the ISP and checked if they will allow me to make the stats public, but they say it can not be done with their setup.

Is that the end of it?

I welcome any tips or pointers.

Dave

You could copy (wget) the HTML/images from your stats site and put it up on your own public site. It's obviously not the most preferred method but you should be able to come up with something. Use the --http-user=yourusername --http-passwd=yourpassword wget options to get past your authentication. You could write a script that downloads the HTML and images from the secure site and upload it to your public site.

I believe you can also download your own copy of Webalizer and run it locally in your web directory. You can also try AWSTATS. It is the same type of application as Webalizer but written in perl instead of php/C (I think some of Webalizer is written in C, backend anyway). However make sure if you get AWStats that get get a version newer then 6.2. Versions 6.2 and earlier have a gigantic security hole in it. This was actually the method used to take down the phpBB support site a few weeks ago.

Thank you for your suggestions,

I think perhaps

I believe you can also download your own copy of Webalizer and run it locally in your web directory.

This may not work as the server is not mine, the site is hosted with my ISP.

I have never used Webalizer, well I have never installed it, but I am assuming you do actually have to install it rather than just place a file in a directory?

If all I need to do is place a file in a directory, I am getting webalizer, but if I need to install it, then I think the chances of my ISP letting me do this are slim to none.

Thank you for youe suggestions all the same

Cheerz

Dave

Not only would you have install it but you would also have to have access to the Apache logs and be able to add a cron job to run it and I assume you don't have that level of access either.

You are right there Void.

My ISP likes to keep things locked up nice and tight.

I suppose I can't complain too much, it is 'free' space, and they have the rest of the server to worry about, its just a site that a friend and my self test things at really, but we do get traffic, sometimes from the most unlikely places as well, my problams have rose from wanting more people to have access to the stats, for various reasons, but NOT wanting to share my password around any further as this password in the wrong hands could do all sorts of nasty things to my ISP account, as they use the same password for the entire account.

I have uploaded a module (the site is built around xoops) that is trying to keep a count on the stats, I can give access to this, as I can change the password, but its version of the stats and the webalizers version seems to differ greatly, AND it seems to slow the site down a little.

I am not too bothered about it, after seeing it at your site, I thought it was a nice idea to include this on our test site, but, it is something I can live without.

Dave

EDIT: PS: I have still got plans to setup my own server, when I finally get round to it, I can use this as my test site, and I can decided where I place the webalizer etc
The only thing that concerns me is that this test site of our (for what ever reasons) sometimes seems to get a lot of traffic, I only have a 2Mb ADSL service, which has an upload speed of 256Kb, I wonder how quick it would be before my connection to the world would grind to a halt?

This Void Main site is run from a cable connection with the same speeds you mention so you can probably expect similar performance.

Thats interesting,

I actually meant MY internet usage might be impared should I host the site from my own home.

Do you have 2 internet connections? if not, then is your internet experience effected by having the site running over the same line, especially as your site gets quite a seriously large amount of traffic.

Dave

Void Main wrote:Not only would you have install it but you would also have to have access to the Apache logs and be able to add a cron job to run it and I assume you don't have that level of access either.

On a decent hosting site you will have exclusive access and error logs for your site in your web directory. Example on my host in my web directory I have a "htdocs", "cgi-bin", "logs" and "conf" directory. Of course the cgi-bin is my own script alias, the htdocs is my document root for my site, the logs is where my access and error logs reside for my site alone and conf is where I put config file (like my webalizer config file). Each site on this server has the exact same setup so we all run seperately from each other. It is actually a very nice setup. The use of name based vhosts should allow for this in the apache configuration.

dickinsd wrote:Thats interesting,

I actually meant MY internet usage might be impared should I host the site from my own home.

Do you have 2 internet connections? if not, then is your internet experience effected by having the site running over the same line, especially as your site gets quite a seriously large amount of traffic.

Dave

The Void Main site is in my home on my home cable connection. :) No, it doesn't impair our internet usage in the least because all the traffic to the void site would be upload traffic and typically all your surfing is download traffic. Plus I've kept the site ugly enough and specific enough that it doesn't draw a lot of traffic. Yup, this is by design. :) I have servers on higher speed lines (T1) and where I work for a day job we have a full T3, but since the Void Main site is just my playground I run it from my cable connection.

Cool.

Well I guess its a case of 'What am I waiting for' then.

I should 'finally' get round to settinp up apache on one of my machines.
Been planning to play with apache for ages, never seem to get there, perhaps this might be the kick up the ass I was looking for

Thanks

Dave

Hi.

I have a simple Apache setup running, it is serving a single HTML page that is just an IFrame that points to a different site.

I have got webalizer to work also (V. easy)

I just wonder; I need to type webalizer at command line to cause the logs to update.

I take it most people have this setup to run auto.

Would I need to create a 'cron job' and if so what is the general feeling on intervals for updating the logs?

Thanks for any tips

Dave

I have a little script ~/webalizer/runwebalizer:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
cd ~/webalizer
webalizer


and this cron job:

Code: Select all

[voidmain@voidmain]$ crontab -l | grep webalizer
0 * * * * /home/voidmain/webalizer/runwebalizer > /home/voidmain/webalizer/runwebalizer.log 2>&1


The above runs once an hour on the hour. My webalizer.conf is also in ~/webalizer.

Hi thanks for the tips.

I wonder if you can help me figure out a problem I seem to have created somehow.

The night I installed the stats, they worked perfectly.

I could access them from any local machine, I could access them from any remote machine using my external IP.

I don't think I made any changes but for some reason I can't get the stats to display any more. (Excluding the machine they are running from)

If I try to access the stats from any other machine, either on my network or elsewhere I get this error:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /usage on this server.
Apache/2.0.52 (Fedora) Server at Eval01 Port 80

The night I installed Webalizer i set it so that it would generate the files in my /var/www/html/usage folder, like I said this worked fine on the night of install.

I have tried changing permissions to several users and groups:
Apache
Webalizer
me
nobody

Can anyone give me some tips on where I need to go to find the reason for the errors, or can anyone tell me what the user and group permissions should be for the /usage directory and the index.html file in that directory?

Thanks

Dave

What are the permissions on your usage directory?

$ ls -ld /var/www/html/usage

What user does your webalizer job run under?

What associated error messages are in your /var/log/httpd/error_log?