awstats for Debian
==================

Quick'n'dirty setup
-------------------

Do the following for a simple setup of a single website with Apache:

  * Edit /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 to permit www-data access to
    logfiles
  * Copy /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/apache.conf to
    /etc/apache2/conf-available/awstats.conf
  * Restrict access to Location /cgi-bin/awstats.pl with
    password-based authentication or via host access control.  Please
    read "Authentication, Authorization and Access Control" HOWTO on
    the Apache docs website http://httpd.apache.org/docs/ to see
    available opportunities.
  * Run "a2enconf awstats"

Optionally edit /etc/default/awstats to disable nightly build of static
html reports (placed in /var/cache/awstats/).

The above is _NOT_ supported or recommended!  Please read the rest of
this document instead...


No stats are generated due to logfile permissions
-------------------------------------------------

As AWStats is used both as a CGI-script and offline, it is by default
run as uid=www-data in cron jobs so that generated files are
accessible from CGI as well.  By default Apache stores (since version
1.3.22-1) logfiles with uid=root and gid=adm, so you need to either...

 1) Change the rights of the logfiles so that www-data has at least read
    access.  For example:

    * change line in /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 to: "create 644 root adm"
    * change permissions of existing files: chmod 644 /var/log/apache2/*.log

 2) As 1) but change to a specific user, and use the suEXEC feature of
    Apache to run as same user (and either change the right of
    /var/lib/awstats as well or use another directory).  This is more
    complicated, but then the logs are not generally accessible to the
    server (which was probably the point of the Apache default).

 3) Change awstats.pl to group adm (but beware that you are then
    taking the risk of allowing a CGI-script access to admin stuff on
    the machine!).

With other webservers than Apache several things should probably be
changed, like location and format of logfiles.


A few minutes is lost each day/week/month
-----------------------------------------

By default AWStats scans logfiles each 10 minutes. When Apache (and
other webservers) rotate their logfiles, the last entries in the old
logfile may not have been read by AWStats.

Make sure to run AWStats right _before_ web logs are rotated.  For
example, insert the following lines in /etc/logrotate.d/apache2:

    prerotate
      if [ -x /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh ]; then
        su -l -c /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh www-data
      fi
    endscript

Also consider enabling lock files in /etc/awstats/awstats.conf with
EnableLockForUpdate=1 so that only one AWStats update process is
running at a time.  This will reduce system resources especially if
the AWStats update process takes longer than 10 minutes to complete.
This solution has some security drawbacks: lockfile with well-known
name and writable by www-data user.


The icons are missing
---------------------

You should redirect requests for /awstats-icon/ to
/usr/share/awstats/icon/.

In Apache, this is done by adding the following to
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

    Alias /awstats-icon/ /usr/share/awstats/icon/

For other webservers you should either do something similar, or make a
symlink from /var/www/awstats-icon to /usr/share/awstats/icon/.


Multiple stats
--------------

To handle multiple stats (eg. using VirtualHosts in Apache) you
should...

 1) Place all additional configs in /etc/awstats/.

 2) Name the new configs "awstats." + whatever you want + ".conf" (eg.
    "awstats.example.com.conf"). But avoid "awstats.awstats.conf".

    To retain use of a common config file containing defaults for all
    of your sites, consider a scheme such as the following:

    Make a bunch of awstats.[site_name_here].conf files, and have the
    first line include the parent awstats.conf file (which by default
    also includes awstats.conf.local).  The remainder of the file
    should have your site-specific configuration settings, which
    override the defaults specified in awstats.conf and
    awstats.conf.local.

    Here is an example of an awstats.example.com.conf file (of course,
    tailor the file for your own configuration):

        Include "/etc/awstats/awstats.conf"
        SiteDomain="example.com"
        HostAliases="example.com www.example.com"
        DirData="/var/lib/awstats/example.com"
        LogFile="/var/log/apache2/example.com_access_log"

    This way you can leave awstats.conf alone, and put your
    server-specific settings into awstats.conf.local, and your
    site-specific settings into each awstats.[site_name_here].conf
    file.

    Note, that awstats package cannot safely handle upgrades to
    locally added config files -- if config options change then the
    main file is updated (with warnings if edited locally) but extra
    config files are silently ignored and possibly broken.

 3) Default awstats crontabs in /etc/cron.d/awstats can handle
    generation of the raw statistics data and html reports for above
    config layout.  But you can comment out defaults and edit
    /etc/cron.d/awstats for each site. Possibly add lines like this:

        20 2 * * * www-data [ -x /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl ] && \
            /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=example.com -update >/dev/null


Browser and referer stats are missing
-------------------------------------

Check, if the logfile has needed info about browser types and referer.
It is recommended to use "combined" logfiles format (Apache in Debian
uses one by default).


Where is configure.pl?
----------------------

AWStats configure.pl script is not available as a CGI script on
Debian.  Instead, it is located as awstats_configure.pl in
/usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/.


Cannot run configs outside of /etc/awstats/
-------------------------------------------

You can.  Please, use -configdir parameter for awstats.pl like this:

  /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -configdir=/home/user/ \
                              -config=example.com \
                              ...

If awstats.pl is used as CGI script, overwriting of configdir with a
value that differs from a default value is only possible if the
environment variable AWSTATS_ENABLE_CONFIG_DIR is defined.
