Just signed up with a host that does not provide stats. I was told there are good free programs out there that will interpret the access logs and provide stats. On the advice of someone that had used it before, I downloaded and set up OpenWebScope. I cannot get it to work, it keeps giving me an FTP error each time I try to run the program.

According to the software company, the problems are either an incorrect server name, an invalid path or file name, or incorrect user name/password.

My host has given me 2 possibilities of server names to try, and numerous paths to try, and I still get the FTP error with every combination.

1. Is it unusual that the host can't give me a path? We have traded numerous e-mails, with the responses being something like this..."try /logs/ instead of /log/..." On their last response, received a longer path that looks like it approaches a full path. But I am a newbie on stuff like this.

2. Could the problem be on my end? I have the program installed on a PC, not a server, on the root C drive, and pointing to my domain on the host's server, and the path(s) my host has given me.

3. Is there another program someone could recommend that might be easier to set up? I have considered Hitbox, but my site is several hundred pages including many downloaded files that aren't on a trackable "page." It would take me many hours to drop that code on each page.

Any suggestions? Or do I just find another host that "automagically" generates stats for me?

I highly recommend thecounter.com its free and gives you very detailed stats on who access's your pages and you dont have to install anything just insert a piece of code on your web pages

I have used this program but I would download the log file to my hard drive and run the program that way.
You are supposed to be able to run it from your server but you may not have the path correct.

It sounds like your host read Web Hosting for Dummies and decided to go into the hosting business.

If they can't answer a simple question like the correct path, I wouldn't expect they could handle a tough question.

That's the problem when people can get a shared server account, know nothing about hosting, and represent themselves as a hosting company.

Analog is a nice log analysis program that is easy to configure. You can get it from http://www.analog.cx/.

Do you have shell access (Telnet or SSH) to your account? On our servers, we store the Apache logs in /home/accountuser/logs/. Try to log into the system using either Telnet or FTP and check for a directory similar to that under before your public_html directory. However, the location of the log files is arbitrary and your host could have put them anywhere.


2. Could the problem be on my end? I have the program installed on a PC, not a server, on the root C drive, and pointing to my domain on the host's server, and the path(s) my host has given me.


Um, how is the stats program supposed to access your log files on the server?

If your host cannot tell you the path to the logs, suggest that the support guy look in the Apache httpd.conf file and search for your domain. In your virtual host statement, the path after "TransferLog", if any is specified, is the your log file.

You Might Get in Trouble For This
If you have Telnet access, you can try checking the later yourself by doing the following.

Type: whereis apache

Take the path it returns and add /conf/httpd.conf to it and use the Pico program to view it. On our system, you would type:

pico /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

Press Ctrl+W to open a search "box" and type in your domain name. See if you can find the line with "TransferLog" in your virtual host statement. Do not worry about messing anything up because you almost certainly do not have write permissions to the file.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

You can upload a PHP or Perl program to the folder (I'm assuming your stats program is a Perl CGI?) and write a simple program that prints out the $DOCUMENT_ROOT environmental variable, which should give you the path to that folder. In PHP, this would be:

<?php print $DOCUMENT_ROOT ?>

You can upload a PHP or Perl program to the folder (I'm assuming your stats program is a Perl CGI?) and write a simple program that prints out the $DOCUMENT_ROOT environmental variable, which should give you the path to that folder. In PHP, this would be:


That will tell him the path to the publicly viewable document root which he should already have access to since he has to be able to upload his site's content. I guess it is worth a try, but it might be of limited help. I suppose it is possible that if the host used nothing but default settings, the document root might be a sub directory of the Apache location.

I think the key is to find out where the log files are stored (if at all). It is possible that there are no Apache logs on the server or that every site dumps to the same common log files. That is the information that can be retrieved from httpd.conf. Either he or his host needs to look in that file.

Best regards,

The assumption so far has been the server is a Unix server, it may also be an NT server, running IIS.

Humorthem, would you mind posting your domain name, this would give us better insight into what type of server you are being hosted on.

Thanks

I had been holding off on posting my domain or host as I didn't want to get on bad terms with them, and also to give them a chance to try and tell me what is wrong. I did hear back from them (they have been prompt on questions) and they told me to install a server side program, AXS. The program says it will take a total of 3 hours or so to install, configure, and test.

Let's see, to sign up with Tera-Byte, have stats included, and upload my site to the new host, it will take about 30 minutes, and my cost stays the same. This is a no-brainer.

Thanks to all for your time and thoughtful responses, but this newbie is jumping to a host that's a little more user-friendly.

Originally posted by humorthem

Thanks to all for your time and thoughtful responses, but this newbie is jumping to a host that's a little more user-friendly.

Probably a smart move :). Good luck!

i have to jump in here. although we do advertise we provide stats we are using cobalt raq servers and their stats have been less than stellar in performance. just so your aware.

Steve

Originally posted by Keeg
i have to jump in here. although we do advertise we provide stats we are using cobalt raq servers and their stats have been less than stellar in performance. just so your aware.

Steve


Steve,

Have you tried using Webalizer for the RaQ? We've been running 1.3 and just upgraded to 2.01 and they have run pretty much flawlessly (on several RaQ2's). The output is nice, and we just add a job for each customer to the cron.daily directory. Plus, using the webmin.conf file we can give customers the opportunity to customize their stats.

You can find out more about webalizer at:

http://www.mrunix.com/webalizer

If you want to see sample output, take a look at the stats for our page:

http://www.version12.net/webalizer/

Hope this helps.

allan

Don't go with thecounter.com. They used to have a good service but they changed somethings last year and it wen down hill fast.

As to AXS it's great! But it shouldn't take 3 hours to install unless you have 100 web pages to update.

I installed webalizer 2.30 and it has effectivley stalled out the loading of any and all PHP pages, have contacted the person resonsible for this package and the help he gave me was retarded.

Avoid it like the plague if your like me and dont know how to make PHP work after installing this webalizer.

any help would be appreciated

Kerry,

Most likely, installing Webalizer overwrote some of the settings in your httpd.conf file.

Make sure the following lines are not commented out in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:

LoadModule php_module /usr/lib/apache/libphp3.so
AddModule mod_php.c

Good luck!

Oh my god, how can Webalizer ruin your PHP installed? :)
I would recommend you Webalizer or Analog too, they are quite simple..and if you run in that trouble with more complex programs, maybe, it's the answer for this
hosting...

As of seeing you correct path write a simple perlish or php script, which would execute unix 'pwd' command ;)

I uncommented out those 2 lines, and this is the result:


[root /]# httpd restart
Syntax error on line 58 of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf:
Cannot load /usr/lib/apache/libphp4.so into server: /usr/lib/libgd.so.1: undefined symbol: png_set_dither
[root /]#

Oh my god, how can Webalizer ruin your PHP installed? :)

Pppfft you tell me there Vlad, seems I am not the only one to have major grief after installing this webalizer garbage.

cheers

but what the hell it did with your system? ;)
Have you configured PHP module with libgd support previously? I even can't imagine, what is the reason for this error, in other words, if your php module can't find libgd, then that's not webalizer bug.. hm.. need to download that thingie, and try to break it ;)