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发信人: Lg (创造人生的传奇), 信区: Linux
标 题: Web Analysis Using Analog
发信站: BBS 荔园晨风站 (Mon Mar 20 14:42:34 2000), 转信
Web Analysis Using Analog
Every web site needs a way to get accurate statistics--here's a freely
available program to give you that information.
by Gaelyne R. Gasson
One of the many responsibilities of being a webmaster is keeping tabs on the
traffic your site receives. This information can help when it comes time to
update: you will know which pages are requested most often and which could
use a little more promotion.
Analog is an open-source program that analyses log files from web servers,
creating as many as 32 different reports. It works on many operating systems,
including Linux, and supports 35 different languages. It's extremely flexible
and fast. Its author is Stephen Turner, a Research fellow at Sidney Sussex
College at the University of Cambridge. His research has to do with
mathematical problems in communications networks, so he has a good solid
background when it comes to log file analysis.
Analog's versatility can make it seem very complicated; it has over 200
configuration options. The number of choices is also what makes it very
useful for hostmasters and webmasters alike.
A common question on the analog-help mail list is, ``How do I setup Analog
for virtual hosts?''. This article will cover setup for both virtual hosts
and individual pages. In addition, I'll describe how to use configuration and
script files to get monthly, hourly, daily and specialized reports.
I've used Analog for several years, first on a FreeBSD system; I was a
dial-in customer curious about my personal web pages. Later, I used Analog
with
Win95/98, and now use it on a Linux system as a web administrator. An
example of my publicly available log analysis setup can be found at http:
//vcsweb.com/logs/.
Analog is the type of program that no two users will use in the same way, due
to the vast number of options, only the items I have experience with will be
discussed.
Myths About Analysing Log Files
Before delving into Analog's configuration files, it's important to
understand what you can and can't learn about your site from log files. First,
the log files should be considered only as an estimation of traffic. Log
references aren't available when web pages have been accessed from either
browser or ISP cache files. According to Analog's author, it's impossible to
tell the number of distinct visitors or the total number of visits.
The bottom line is that HTTP is a stateless protocol. People don't log in and
retrieve several documents: they make a separate connection for each file
they want. Many times, they don't even behave as if they were logged in to
one site. Hence, Analog's emphasis on requests, rather than visits.
What we can learn varies, depending on what the web server writes to the logs.
In general, this usually includes the computer name (or IP number)
requesting information, whether the request was for a page (generally an HTML
document) or another type of file, the status of the request, the time and
date
the request was made, and the number of bytes transferred. If the log file
reports it, we can also learn which web site or page referred the visitor to
our site and the browser they were using.
Installation
Analog's home page is at http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/, and it
can be downloaded from http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/analog4.01.
tar.gz. This web site also lists several mirror sites for the file.
Installation is rather painless: simply type make while in the analog4.01
directory. Several options can be set in the analhead.h file prior to using
the
make command, such as host or organization name, the log file path and name;
I've found it more practical to use the configuration files for these items
instead. The only item I needed to change in analhead.h was the directory
path of /usr/local/etc/httpd to /etc/httpd so it matched my Red Hat Linux
system, which allows me to use it from the /etc/httpd/analog directory.
It should be noted that Analog will work from any directory, as long as it
can find its /lang directory. This can be accomplished by adding the language
file and path name to Analog's configuration file(s), but for my use, it's
easier to compile the program to the directory in which I want to work. When
using the program as a single user, you can compile and use it from your home
directory.
As a second step to installing Analog, I highly recommend viewing and
bookmarking the local set of Analog's documentation in your favorite web
browser. If you use Analog for creating HTML-format reports, this lets you
have
the documentation open in one browser window while viewing the reports
you've generated in another. Analog isn't the type of program for which you
can
read the documentation from start to finish, create one configuration file
and
quit. Rather, the documentation provides information on each of its over 200
commands; you experiment to find the settings that suit your preferences.
Log Files
Analog can be configured to use customized log formats, which is a very good
thing if you happen to have log files in various formats created by different
servers. Even though I've used a number of different servers, I've been able
to
continue using Analog to analyze new and old log files (of different
formats) by listing the type of log format before giving the name and path of
the log file. I now use the Apache web server's combined log format, which
produces a common log file that lists the referrer and browser information
with
the log entry for each access. Otherwise, I'd have separate log files, one
for
the referrer and another for the browser, and would need to include these
log files when working with Analog's configuration files.
If you're a hostmaster, you can configure Apache to use a different log file
for each virtual host. This keeps the information for each host separate and
makes using Analog to analyze your virtual host log files much more
straightforward. This is done using Apache's virtual host directive:
<VirtualHost vhost1.com>
ServerAdmin webmaster@vhost1.com
DocumentRoot /www/docs/vhhost1.com
ServerName vhost1.com
ErrorLog logs/vhost1.com-error_log
CustomLog logs/vhost1.com-access_log combined
</VirtualHost>
Configuration Files
While you can use Analog with just the analog.cfg file to tell it what to do
and where to save its report, if you want to create different reports for
virtual hosts and individual pages, it's best to use multiple configuration
files. Each configuration file serves a different purpose and can be combined
with script files containing command-line switches for Analog.
In this scenario, Analog is run not once, but several times; each run creates
a
separate report. The analog.cfg file includes only a very few base commands
that relate to our main site, not the virtual host sites. When creating
reports
for virtual hosts, I exclude analog.cfg from being called with the -G
command-line switch.
The basic arrangement is similar to a pyramid format. All major items are in
a master.cfg file to cover the broad category of all virtual hosts on our
system. Items relating only to a specific virtual host and their general
preferences are in the next tier, and finally, individual page.cfg files are
in
the last category. This allows me to create specialized setups as needed and
still track individual hosts, sites and pages without making major changes.
When Analog is run for a virtual host, the master.cfg file is called first,
followed by the master-vhost.cfg (I replace ``vhost'' with the name of the
host
when naming the file), and finally, single-page configuration files for
separate pages. An example master.cfg file is included here (see Listing 1).
Listing 1
Virtual Host Master Configuration Files
Listing 2
An example vhost.cfg file is shown in Listing 2, and as you can see, it's
fairly general, since most of the report formatting and such is handled by
the master.cfg file. The vhost.cfg file can be used to create a ``total
activity'' report for the virtual host. The command-line prompt (or script
file), shown without paths for clarity, is:
analog -G +gmaster.cfg +gvhost1.cfg
+Ovhost1-total.html
The -G tells Analog not to use analog.cfg (which is used for the main host
only). +g is used whenever we use additional configuration files: there's no
space between it and the file name. +O designates the output file name: it's
the letter O, not the number zero.
Individual Page or Site Configuration Files
Single configuration files are used to give the basic information on the
files(s) to include in the report (using the FILEINCLUDE command). The
HOSTNAME
and HOSTURL directives are the items that will appear at the top of each
report after the words ``Web Server Statistics for''. For individual pages,
we use the name and URL of the page rather than the host name or URL. A
single-page configuration file can be three or more lines, as shown in
Listing 3.
Listing 3
Notice that the log file to use, output file and report-formatting commands
aren't included; these items are set either in the master.cfg files or within
the script file when Analog is run. This lets me use the same information
when creating the daily and monthly reports, even though the two reports are
very different.
The FILEINCLUDE command causes Analog to search through the logs and retrieve
data relating to only the file you've specified. It's a very powerful command,
and is normally used in the configuration files for individual pages or
sites.
It can also be used with a wild card; if I wanted to include all files in
the widgets directory, I would use:
FILEINCLUDE http://vhost1.com/widgets/*
The command line used to create a daily report for this page (all on one
line),
shown without path information for clarity, is:
analog -G +gmaster.cfg +gmaster-vhost1.cfg
+gwidgets.cfg +Owidget.html
Monthly Text Report Configuration Files
I mail a monthly report of web stats to a few of my customers who aren't
on-line and who have found the daily reports were too long to print and took
too much time to edit. To solve the problem and save time, I created
month-vhost.cfg files which create ASCII text format reports. The month-vhost.
cfg files are used in conjunction with the individual configuration files
described above. A sample month-vhost.cfg file is shown in Listing 4. To
produce the monthly text reports, +a is used on the command line to designate
ASCII output:
analog -G +gmonth-vhost1.cfg +gwidgets.cfg\
+Owidget.txt +a
Listing 4
Server Activity Configuration File
As I'm responsible for the entire system, it's important to have a review of
the overall picture, including all our hosts. To accomplish this, I have a
separate activity configuration file and run Analog once a day with a cron
entry. The activity configuration file includes the log files for all hosts,
and this requires giving extra information to Analog so it can format the
results; otherwise, /index.html would be considered as belonging to one host.
Commands in configuration files must be on one line. The LOGFILE command
allows
you to specify the name of the host corresponding to the log file (ignore
line
wrap):
LOGFILE /var/log/httpd/access_log
http://main-isp.com/
LOGFILE /var/log/httpd/vhost1.com-access_log
http://vhost1.com
Keeping Information Private
Our daily reports are published on the Web, so I prefer to keep cgi-bin
information confidential. A daily webmaster e-mail report (described below)
takes care of informing me of web-related exploits, so the information isn't
required on the public reports. The cgi-bin directories and file names need
to be aliased so that this information isn't available to the public. Analog
can use output aliases to give control over how a file or directory is
displayed within reports. This can be used to keep complete path and file
names
from the public, if desired. I use the following alias commands in my master.
cfg files to translate cgi-bin path and file information to simply admin
(ignore line wrap):
REQOUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
DIROUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
FAILOUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
FAILREFOUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
TYPEOUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
REFOUTPUTALIAS http://main-isp.com/cgi-bin/*
"admin"
REDIROUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/* "admin"
The last two items are used in Virtual Host master.cfg files, so we're still
not giving away information on other local hosts in referral reports. If you
want to be more specific, you could alias file names to match what they do,
such as the following line (ignore wrap):
REQOUTPUTALIAS */cgi-bin/bannerpro.pl* "Banner Program"
Excluding Pages and Requests
I have a number of partial pages such as footers, sidebars and headers in a
global directory that could cause Analog to inflate the request totals out of
proportion. When you exclude information, it usually relates to the entire
host, so it makes sense to use exclude commands in the master.cfg instead of
in
individual page or site configuration files. To exclude global directory
accesses from being counted as requests, I use the command:
REQEXCLUDE */global/*
Partial web pages, such as header-and footer-type files, can also be excluded
individually with the PAGEEXCLUDE command:
PAGEEXCLUDE */footer.html
or (for those who use PHP):
PAGEEXCLUDE */footer.php3
Daily Webmaster E-mail
I use a small script to receive a daily Webmaster report. This is basically
the
same as the Activity report, but it includes information that's excluded
from the public version. When I read my e-mail in the morning, I can see the
status of my system over the last 24 hours. The script runs from cron, and
since Analog will send results to STDOUT if no outfile is listed, I use this
to
my advantage. The output becomes the body of the e-mail. A bare-basics
webmaster.cfg file is included in Listing 5.
Listing 5
Automating with Scripts and cron
Using script files allows Analog to create several reports, one after the
other. After the configuration files, the script files are the next step. I
use
one hourly script to create the Activity Report, and two daily script files:
one for daily reports that are published on the Web, and the other to send
the webmaster e-mail each morning. A monthly script file creates the text
files
that are mailed to customers each month. These scripts are shown in Listings
6-9.
Listing 6
Listing 7
Listing 8
Listing 9
Web Index for Published Reports
When working with the web-published statistics reports, or when simply
checking
them periodically, it's much easier if you create an index web page for
reports and bookmark it. While this may seem a common-sense thing to do, I
remember my early days of experimenting with Analog and fumbling around
directories to find the resulting reports. Every step toward making analyzing
our logs easier means we have a little extra time to work on developing other
web projects to add to the list and continue the cycle.
--
☆ 来源:．BBS 荔园晨风站 bbs.szu.edu.cn．[FROM: bbs@202.96.155.246]
※ 修改:·jjksam 於 Dec 19 13:42:21 修改本文·[FROM: 192.168.0.146]
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