Stop Flying Blind: Deep Log Analysis with AWStats on Linux

The Black Box Problem

If you are managing a high-traffic site and relying solely on JavaScript-based trackers, you are missing half the picture. Bots, scrapers, hotlinkers, and status 500 errors do not trigger JS snippets. They live in your server logs. But staring at tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log is a recipe for madness, not insight.

We need to parse that data. For years, AWStats (Advanced Web Statistics) has been the weapon of choice for sysadmins who need granular detail without sending data to a third party. It parses Apache, Nginx, and mail logs to generate graphical reports. However, running log analysis on a busy server is a double-edged sword. It requires CPU cycles and heavy disk I/O.

I have seen production servers freeze at 04:00 AM because a cron job started crunching a 5GB log file on a shared hosting plan with oversold resources. Here is how to implement AWStats correctly, keep your performance stable, and stay compliant with Norwegian privacy standards.

1. The Setup: AWStats on CentOS/Debian

Installation in 2011 is straightforward via standard repositories. If you are on a CoolVDS instance running CentOS 5:

For Debian Squeeze users:

Once installed, the heavy lifting is in the configuration. You need to copy the model config file and customize it for your domain. Look for /etc/awstats/awstats.model.conf and copy it to awstats.yourdomain.com.conf.

2. Configuration Essentials

Open your new config file. There are three critical parameters you must adjust immediately to ensure the parser actually finds your data:

Pro Tip: Ensure your Apache LogFormat is set to "combined". The standard "common" format drops User-Agent and Referer data, rendering AWStats mostly useless for tracking bots or referral spam.

3. The Performance Bottleneck (and How to Fix It)

This is where the "Battle-Hardened" part comes in. Parsing text files is I/O intensive. If you are on a budget VPS with shared magnetic spinning disks, a large log analysis can cause I/O Wait to spike, slowing down your database and web delivery.

We solve this at CoolVDS by using Xen virtualization. Unlike OpenVZ, Xen provides better isolation. When you run a heavy perl process to parse logs, it stays within your allocated CPU slices and doesn't contend as heavily with neighbors. Furthermore, our storage backends utilize enterprise-grade RAID-10 SAS (and increasingly SSDs for caching tiers) which handle random read operations significantly better than standard SATA drives found in budget hosting.

Optimization Strategy: Do not update stats on every request. Set a cron job to run once every hour, preferably offset from the top of the hour to avoid the "cron storm" effect where every server in the datacenter wakes up at 00:00.

4. Privacy and Datatilsynet Compliance

Operating in Norway means respecting privacy. While the strict GDPR framework is still a discussion for the future, the Norwegian Personal Data Act (Personopplysningsloven) and Datatilsynet generally view IP addresses as personal data if they can be linked to an individual.

To stay on the safe side, you should anonymize IP addresses in your stats if you do not have a specific technical need to retain them. AWStats allows for this via plugins. Enable the GeoIPfree plugin to get country data without storing the full octets of the visitor's IP.

5. Automating the Update

Add this to your crontab to update quietly:

This runs the update at 30 minutes past the hour. If you are hosting on CoolVDS, the low latency to the NIX (Norwegian Internet Exchange) in Oslo ensures that your server is responding fast to local users, but remember: log parsing happens locally. Your CPU power matters.

Summary

AWStats gives you the raw truth about your infrastructure. It tells you when GoogleBot is hammering your site or when a specific IP is probing for SQL injections. But it demands resources. Do not run this on cheap, oversold container hosting.

If you need a server that can chew through 10GB of logs while still serving PHP pages at lightning speed, you need dedicated resources. CoolVDS offers the stability and high-performance storage backbone required for serious system administration.