Stop Grepping in the Dark: High-Performance Log Analysis with AWStats

There is a certain romance to watching tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log fly by on a terminal. It looks busy. It looks like work. But unless you can mentally parse Apache common log format at 1,000 lines per second, it is useless for business intelligence.

You need to know who is hitting your server, which robots are scraping your content, and which keywords are driving traffic from Google. Most importantly, you need to know this without handing your data over to third-party scripts that slow down your page load times.

Enter AWStats. It is the gold standard for server-side log analysis. However, if configured poorly, this Perl-based beast can grind a shared hosting account to a halt. In this guide, we will set up AWStats the right way on a dedicated VPS environment, ensuring you get the data you need without sacrificing the I/O performance your users demand.

The Reality of Log Parsing and I/O Wait

I recently inherited a project for a media client in Oslo. They were hosting a high-traffic news portal on a budget shared host. Every night at 04:00, the site would go unreachable for twenty minutes. The culprit? An automated AWStats cron job trying to parse a 2GB log file on a server with choked disk I/O.

Log parsing is disk-intensive. It requires reading massive text files and writing to a database structure. On a standard shared server, you are fighting for disk heads with hundreds of other users. This is where the architecture of your hosting matters.

Pro Tip: This is why we rely on Xen virtualization at CoolVDS. Unlike OpenVZ, where resources can be oversold and 'burst' limits are vague, Xen provides strict isolation. When you parse logs on a CoolVDS instance, you are using your allocated RAM and disk throughput, not waiting in line behind a noisy neighbor.

Step 1: Installation (CentOS 5 & Debian Lenny)

Let’s get this running. I am assuming you have root access. If you are still on shared hosting without SSH, stop reading and upgrade your infrastructure.

For CentOS 5 (via EPEL):

yum install awstats

For Debian 5.0 (Lenny):

apt-get install awstats

Step 2: Configuration for Performance

The default configuration is safe, but slow. We need to tweak it for a production environment. Open your config file, usually located at /etc/awstats/awstats.yourdomain.conf.

1. Pointer to the Log File

Ensure this matches your Apache (or Lighttpd) configuration. If you are rotating logs daily (which you should be), you might need to use a wildcard or a specific date tag.

LogFile="/var/log/httpd/access_log"

2. The Log Format

Apache's combined log format provides the most detail, including User Agents and Referrers. Ensure your httpd.conf uses combined and set AWStats to match:

LogFormat=1

3. DNS Lookups (The Performance Killer)

This is the single most critical setting. By default, AWStats might try to do a reverse DNS lookup on every IP address to determine the country of origin. On a high-traffic site, this latency is catastrophic.

Disable real-time DNS lookups:

DNSLookup=0

Instead, use the GeoIP plugin if you need country data. It reads from a local binary file rather than querying the network. It is infinitely faster and reduces load on your outgoing network interface.

Step 3: Scheduling Updates Correctly

Never, ever allow AWStats to update via the web browser (CGI). It is a security risk and a performance bottleneck. If a bot crawls the "Update Now" link repeatedly, your CPU load will spike.

Disable the update button in the config:

AllowToUpdateStatsFromBrowser=0

Set up a cron job to run the update process during off-peak hours (relative to your Norwegian audience, 03:00 or 04:00 CET is usually safe).

# /etc/cron.d/awstats
0 3 * * * root /usr/share/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=yourdomain.com -update > /dev/null

Data Privacy in Norway (Datatilsynet Compliance)

Operating a server in Norway means adhering to the Personal Data Act (Personopplysningsloven). IP addresses can be considered personally identifiable information (PII). While server logs are generally accepted for security and maintenance, you should be mindful of retention policies.

Hosting with CoolVDS ensures your data resides physically in Oslo. This is critical for compliance with the EU Data Protection Directive (95/46/EC). Data transfer outside the EEA is a legal headache you do not want; keeping your bits on Norwegian soil simplifies your legal stance significantly.

The Hardware Factor

You can optimize your Perl scripts all day, but you cannot code your way out of slow hardware. Log analysis is I/O bound.

At CoolVDS, we utilize high-performance 15,000 RPM SAS drives in RAID-10 arrays. This setup offers superior read/write speeds compared to the standard SATA drives found in budget hosting. When AWStats is chewing through 500MB of log data, that disk speed difference is the gap between a 2-minute job and a 20-minute server lockup.

Summary

Server logs are your single source of truth. They don't lie about bandwidth, they don't miss bots, and they don't rely on JavaScript. But to harness them, you need to control the process.

1. Disable real-time DNS lookups.
2. Run updates via cron, not CGI.
3. Host on hardware that can handle the I/O throughput.

If your current host starts choking when you try to analyze your own traffic, it is time to move. Deploy a CoolVDS Linux VPS in Oslo today. We offer the low latency and raw disk power professionals require.