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Debian/Ubuntu AWStats virtual host setup

Install awstats with apt-get install awstats. To get geostats working, so you can tell the countries of origin of your visitors, apt-get install libnet-ip-perl libgeo-ipfree-perl.

Configuring Apache

Drop this in /etc/apache2/conf.d/awstats:

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

<Directory /usr/share/awstats/icon>
  Options None
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

Configuring AWStats

For each vhost you want to analyse, create a /etc/awstats/awstats.vhost.domain.co.nz.conf file, looking like such:

LogFile="/var/www/vhost.domain.co.nz/log/access.log"
LogType=W
LogFormat=1
LogSeparator=" "
SiteDomain="vhost.domain.co.nz"
HostAliases="localhost 127.0.0.1"
DNSLookup=1
DirData="/var/lib/awstats"
DirCgi="/cgi-bin"
DirIcons="/awstats-icon"
AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0
AllowFullYearView=2
LoadPlugin="geoipfree"

Use LogFormat 1 if you are using 'combined' Apache logs, which are used by default. Use LogFormat 4 otherwise

Updating the page

Some people like to cron a stats update to happen more often. I will be happy with once a day, so I'll use my daily logrotate time. I have a seperate logrotate file for each vhost:

/var/www/vhost.domain.co.nz/log/*.log {
        daily
        missingok
        rotate 7
        compress
        delaycompress
        notifempty
        create 640 www-data www-data
        prerotate
                /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=vhost.domain.co.nz -update
        endscript
}

You could put a cron fragment like this somewhere:

3,33 * * * * www-data [ -x /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -a -f /etc/awstats/awstats.vhost.domain.co.nz.conf -a -r /var/log/apache/access.log ] && /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=vhost.domain.co.nz -update >/dev/null

Password protect your stats

We will use Apache's .htaccess mechanism to ensure you can only see the stats if you know a password.

htpasswd -c /etc/awstats/awstats.htpasswd username

Now, edit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default, under <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">, add

                AuthType basic
                AuthName "cgi-bin restricted"
                AuthUserFile /etc/awstats/awstats.htpasswd

                <Files awstats.pl>
                        Require valid-user
                </Files>

Reload Apache, and try navigating to http://primary.sitename.co.nz/cgi-bin/awstats.pl?config=vhost.domain.co.nz.

I am only allowing cgi-bin on my primary host; a good compromise is to set up a redirect from http://vhost.domain.co.nz/stats/ to the primary hostname; in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/vhost.domain.co.nz:

        RedirectMatch permanent /stats       http://primary.sitename.co.nz/cgi-bin/awstats
.pl?config=vhost.domain.co.nz

Extra reading

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