Install

sudo apt-get install awstats

Configure AWStats for the default site

Edit the /etc/awstats/awstats.conf.local file and not the master configuration file. The main awstats.conf file is a good reference for all the configuration options, of which there are plenty.

The only thing you really need to start gathering stats for your default-site, is enter your web server's default site domain name /etc/awstats/awstats.conf.local:

SiteDomain="my.domain"

That is all that is needed for AWStats to make statistics out of the default site. We will add more configuration files later, one for each site or virtual host we want to get statistics for. But we must fix a couple of things first.

Fix log file permissions

AWStats update script will run every 10 minutes as the user "www-data" (see /etc/cron.d/awstats). The Apache log files are by default not readable by the user www-data, so something must be done about that.

Edit /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 and give Apache log file read permissions to everybody. This may not be a good idea on a server with untrusted users with shell access, but mine has none.

Change the following line:

create 640 root adm

To:

create 644 root adm

Save, and then change the permissions of the existing log files:

sudo chmod o+r /var/log/apache2/*.log

Also, give permission to access the directory:

sudo chmod o+x /var/log/apache2

Ensure logrotate does not skew your statistics

AWStats runs every ten minutes, but logrotate might rotate a log file whenever it gets full, which will cause AWStats to miss some hits.

To ensure AWStats update script is always run before a logfile is rotated, we need to add a script for that. Add the following directory:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/logrotate.d/httpd-prerotate

Add the update script:

sudo tee /etc/logrotate.d/httpd-prerotate/awstats << 'EOF'
#!/bin/sh
if [ -x /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh ]; then
  su -l -c /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh www-data
fi
EOF

Give execute permission:

sudo chmod ug+x /etc/logrotate.d/httpd-prerotate/awstats

At this point, you can run the statistics collector from the command line:

sudo su -l -c /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh www-data

If there are no error messages, you should now have up-to-date statistics collected. Let's get a site up and running to display the stats.

Configure Apache

Now that we have some real data, let's set up a location where we can actually take a look at it. There's an example Apache configuration file in /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/apache.conf. But don't copy it directly to Apache configuration directory. I added something like this to my default site file under /etc/apache2/sites-enabled:

<Directory /var/lib/awstats>
  Options None
  AllowOverride None
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Directory>

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

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

<Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
  AuthType Basic
  AuthName "Unauthorized use prohibited"
  AuthBasicProvider file
  AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/htpasswd/htpasswd.awstats
  Require valid-user
</Directory>

ScriptAlias /awstats.pl /usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl
Alias /awstats-icon/ /usr/share/awstats/icon/
Alias /awstatsclasses/ /usr/share/java/awstats/

That will require a username and password to access the stats. It is a good idea to use an SSL-secured version of the default site, and use that instead of unsecured one. You can run "a2ensite default-ssl" to enable the default SSL site.

The above configuration will actually from now on require a password for all your cgi scripts dwelling under /usr/lib/cgi-bin, so if you have something there you wish not to protect, move the awstats.pl to somewhere else and secure that instead.

To add the username and password for access:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apache2/htpasswd
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/htpasswd/htpasswd.awstats myusername

Reload Apache configuration:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

And then point your browser to http(s)://my.domain/awstats.pl to see some statistics!

Next, let's move on to configuring separate statistics for multiple sites.

Configure AWStats for multiple sites

Place all additional configs in /etc/awstats/. Name the new configs "awstats." + domain.name + ".conf", eg. awstats.my.other.domain.conf.

In each file, include the main awstats.conf file. The first line should be:

Include "/etc/awstats/awstats.conf"

After that, we need to configure at least the SiteDomain directive, the location of the Apache log file to scan, and place to put the statistics data. For example:

Include "/etc/awstats/awstats.conf"
SiteDomain="my.other.domain"
HostAliases="my.other.domain www.my.other.domain"
DirData="/var/lib/awstats/my.other.domain"
LogFile="/var/log/apache2/my.other.domain_access_log"

Make sure you get the LogFile path right (take a look at your Apache configuration to find out where it should be).

Also, create the directory for the statistics:

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/awstats/my.other.domain
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/lib/awstats/my.other.domain

The next time AWStats runs, within the next 10 minutes, it will collect statistics about this other site. If you are impatient, or want to see if you made any mistakes with your configuration, you can run it manually:

sudo su -l -c /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh www-data

Now we have data for this site.

Repeat the procedure for all other sites you have:

1. Add a configuration file
2. Create a stats directory with the right permissions
3. Gather stats

Accessing statistics for other sites than the default-site

To see the statistics, browse to your default site's awstats.pl script, but give it a "config" url parameter:

http(s)://my.domain/awstats.pl?config=my.other.domain

You can also configure AWStats separately for each site's Apache configuration file, so you can use URLs like this: http(s)://my.other.domain/awstats.pl.