pwebstats: frequently asked questions

Frequently Asked Questions.

1. Q: I try to run pwebstats and get an error message like "./pwebstats: No such file or directory". How do I get pwebstats to run?

   A: You need to make the first line of pwebstats (the one with "#!" at the start) reflect the location of perl on your system. Type "which perl" to find out where perl is installed.

2. Q: I try to run pwebstats and get an error message like syntax error in file /usr/local/pwebstats/pwebstats at line nnn, next 2 tokens "my $word. How do I get pwebstats to run?

   A: Get Perl 5. You're running a version of perl that was superseded by Perl 5 in 1994!

The Future (otherwise known as a to-do list).

Planned for version 2.0.

• Agent Stats
  • Browser/Num Accesses
  • Default to ignore image accesses
• Referer Stats
  • URL/list of referers/num accesses
  • URL pattern/list of referers/num accesses
  • Default to ignore image accesses
• Gross Stats
  • Tallies for HTTP response codes
  • New graphs: Accesses per day, Frequency of Items Requested. Domains excluding local accesses.
  • Hyperlinks from Frequency of Items list.
  • Hit and miss rates for hosts accessing (proxy stats only)
  • IP number -> IP name translation (with user definitions)
  • Addition of news, secnews, https to protocols proxied (proxy stats only)
• Cumulative Stats
  • Basically the same as the gross stats section, but calculated over lifetime of stats, or a defined period.
• Traffic stats
  • Essentially gross stats, but with the accent on byte volume
• User Stats
  • Summaries based on the user field where it is used.
• Logfile support
  • Apache with referer and agent logging
  • Netscape
  • Netscape proxy
  • Extended Common Log Format
  • WU-ftpd logs
• Incremental processing
  • Add data from logfiles to pwebstats at any time (hourly, daily, whatever) and pwebstats will re-generate the output with the new data included.
  • You'll also be able to produce daily, weekly, monthly stats from the one set of data.
• Forms-based configuration
  • Reading (and writing if you dare :-) config file from filesystem,
  • and configuring with pop-up lists, radio buttons, all the fancy stuff.
• Configuration options
  • Settings for:
    • How many weeks to show on server usage graph & page
    • How many items in 'Top N' lists
    • Turn off/on just about every item
  • User-configurable 'domains' - for domain graph(s)/list(s)
• Stats removal
  • The ability to remove the stats for a specific period from pwebstats, and then re-enter the data.
• Text/Postscript Reports
  • Simple summaries that can be printed/emailed.

I'll be changing to HTML tables for most of the <pre> stuff that should be in tables. If you have a problem with this, please let me know.

If you have another log format you'd like pwebstats to read, could you send me the name of the format/program that produces it, a few lines from a log, and any reference to the log format.