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Frequently asked questions
- When I try and compile analog, it gives me an error.
- Analog just runs for a moment and then quits.
- Analog didn't write the logfile when I ran it.
See the section entitled Starting to use
analog.
- Is analog Year 2000 compatible?
Yes (and so are all previous versions). It works properly for dates
between 1970 & 2069 inclusive.
- My stats have stopped updating.
- My stats have reset to zero.
If your ISP runs analog for you, you'll have to ask them.
- How do I find out the number of hits from your data?
I don't use the word hits, because people use it in
different ways, so it's misleading. I use requests for the
number of transfers of any type of file (text, graphics, ...), and
page requests for the number of transfers of HTML pages. See the
section on Analog's definitions
for more information.
- How do I get information on just my pages, not everybody's?
- How do I ignore accesses from my site?
Use the FILEINCLUDE command
or HOSTEXCLUDE command
respectively.
- I want to make several different statistics pages. Do I have to
install several copies of analog?
No. Just install it once, and run it with different
configuration files.
- Can I get data on individual visitors, or visits, to my site?
No, it's not technically possible, and don't believe any program
which tells you it is. See the section on
How the web works for details.
- Do I have to save all my old logfiles?
This is answered in the section about
Cache files.
- What does this error (or warning) mean?
See the section on Errors and
warnings.
- Why doesn't analog agree with the counter on my page?
There are lots of possible reasons. Do they both start from
the same date? Are you just looking at requests for that one page with
analog, not for all your other pages and graphics? Also, analog will
record all requests to that page; if it's a graphic, your counter will
only measure requests from people on graphical browsers that reached
that place on the page.
- How can I do such-and-such with a commandline option?
Use the +C option to put any
configuration command on the commandline.
- Why does the form interface give "Document Returned no
Data"?
If it doesn't happen for a while, then probably the server is giving
up before the analog process has finished running. Increase the timeout
interval on the server.
- The images don't appear when running analog from the form
interface.
You probably need to change the
IMAGEDIR. If the images are in your
/cgi-bin/ directory, the server will try to execute them
instead of just sending them out.
- Can I find out the number of hosts that have accessed each file?
- Can I find out the number of hosts visiting on each day?
No; it would require storing too much data (all host/file pairs, or
all host/day pairs). If there's a particular file you're interested in,
use FILEINCLUDE to restrict the
analysis to only that file. If there's a particular day you're
interested in, use FROM and
TO to restrict the analysis to only that day.
- How can I run analog every day?
This depends on your particular machine. On Unix, you need to run
analog as a cron job (see "man cron"). This is my cron command:
20 1 * * * $HOME/misc/analog
On Windows NT you can do the same with the at command, but only an
administrator can run at. On Windows 95 it's not possible.
- How can I specify different logfiles from the form interface?
Just add a new field to the form with name=lo
- Why are directories listed in the request report?
They are not directories, they are pages with the same name as
the directory. For example, I have a directory called /analog/
and a page called /analog/ (which is the same as
/analog/index.html).
- Why don't you just use one image, and scale it with the
WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes?
The WIDTH and HEIGHT only tell the browser
what size the image will be. They cannot be used for scaling the image,
whatever some browsers do.
- Can you make a cache file that saves everything, not just the time
information?
No. The file would be as long as a compressed logfile, so there
would be no advantage in terms of disk space.
- Why do I only get "unresolved numerical addresses" in the domain
report?
Your server only records the numerical IP address of the hosts that
contact you, not their names. Read the section about
DNS lookups.
- How about an operating system report?
Unfortunately, this is not possible. Many browsers record their
operating system in your browser log, but not all do, and those that do
don't always record it in a consistent format.
- How do I make a link on my page that runs analog?
Link to the analform program, with the
desired options. But be careful about the load on your server.
- My server lists local names in the logfile. Can you put a common
suffix on them automatically?
This wouldn't be a good idea, because things like "unknown"
would get the suffix. You can always add them using
HOSTALIAS.
- Why don't you make proper graphs or tables?
Because lots of people then couldn't read them. Analog produces
HTML 2.0 output so that people with any browser can read it. Also, I
don't want to assume that people have any particular graphics creation
tools.
- Can I change the background colour of my output?
Sadly not. Colours only exist in HTML 3.2, not HTML 2.0.
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to produce the bar charts
in my time reports in HTML 3.2.
- Can you extrapolate from the current month's partial data to produce
a prediction for the whole month, based on the rate so far?
No. There are too many problems in trying to produce anything
sensible, especially near the beginning of the month. Different days of
the week and different times of day cause lots of problems. I would
prefer to produce raw accurate data than suspect derived data.
- Can I make multiple reports with one pass through the logfile?
Not at the moment. I want to do this in a future version, but it will
require some considerable work.
- I ran out of memory when trying to run analog. What can I do?
See the section on Coping with low memory.
- You're processing 10,000,000 requests in under 10 minutes. Why is mine
much slower?
- Analog appears to stall.
If you have DNS lookups on, they are very
slow. Otherwise, it probably depends on the speed of your computer and
disks, and what other programs are running at the same time. You can
use the PROGRESSFREQ command to see
if it's really stalled or whether it's just being slow.
- Why don't you sell analog?
I didn't write analog for the money, and I'm happy just to see
people use it. Besides, I haven't got time to support it commercially,
and I can't use my academic account for commercial purposes. (Of course,
if you want to send me money, or gifts in kind, or even just
postcards...).
If your question is not answered here or in the rest of the Readme, and you
think it should be, see the next section for how to
contact me.
Stephen Turner
E-mail: sret1@cam.ac.uk
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