No rollover of access logs

[jimnyc]

I noticed when looking at my Awstats this morning that it didn't show any entries for yesterday. I looked at the logs and noticed that they had not rolled over, and neither did the error logs.

I renamed "access_log" to "access_log.1" and ran my stats manually and got yesterdays entries included.

The problem is that current entries are now being updated to "access_log.1" and it's not re-creating an access_log.

I even put in a blank access_log file, but it's still updating the access_log.1.

Is there anything I can do from my end, or do I have to wait for Powweb to fix?

I'm on www08 and an email has been sent to support.

[jimnyc]

Nevermind. I have a call in with support and will revert back to normal when they fix their end. In the meantime I figured out how to have the job read all the access logs and only update new info found since the last update. It'll run more jobs to get all my stats, but at least I know I'm not missing anything until the rollover is fixed.

[stevel]

Interesting. My log on callisto rolled over fine.

[Rally]

Please share your method of reading all the logs... I'd love to be able to do that myself. (And I'm sure others would too!)

Thank you!

[transgenik]

jimnyc, thanks a lot for the info...

... but more than your method of reading the logs that Rally is asking about, what I'd like to know is how you manage to get helpful and meaningful answers from PowWeb's tech support. On this very same issue, I finally got this answer after half a day of waiting (which one would hope could have served to cross-check some info on their end... but not at all!):
Hello there

Looks like the stats are there. Please double check.

Hope that Helps! Please contact us if you need further assistance...

Regards,
:rolleyes: :confused: Of course it doesn't help at all: yesterday's stats (about which I specifically and clearly asked in my email) are still missing at the time of writing. She seems to have half-read my message and thinks I can't acess my stats. This is no tech-support, it's a "let's get rid of that bunch of questions" attitude.

After more than half a day of waiting for an answer, one would have hope that tech support would have time 1) to read the question carefuly to give a meaningful answer and 2) to have cross-checked if there were any current problem with the logs before claiming everything was fine (it obviously isn't when you check the stats...)

I know tech support isn't easy (I'm doing it myself every week for my own Web service), but by not taking time to understand the problem before answering, PowWeb is only inciting users to grab the phone and take their time live, because exchanging unhelpful emails from 12 hours to 12 hours is totally frustrating.

But hey, it's up to them if they really prefer us to call toll-free from Montreal, or Timbuktu instead of using email :D

[transgenik]

I got a second answer about the problem with the november 8th stats:
Thank you for contacting Powweb Technical Support. I checked the logs and they
appear to be working, if there was an issue on the 8th we apologize but if
that informaiton was not recorded it can not be retrieved. Please let us know
if we can be of further assistance to you.
Yes, the situation seems back to normal for the 9 and 10, but the 8th november stats are totally lost... not dramatic but without any explanation on what caused the problem and if and how they fixed it, I guess we can just *hope* that the logs records smoothly from now on. Not reassuring at all...

[B&T]

Originally posted by Rally
Please share your method of reading all the logs... I'd love to be able to do that myself. (And I'm sure others would too!)
Keep your own copy and do your own analysis . . .
http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28544

[transgenik]

This is getting very annoying... I had no rollover for my logs yesterday. It's the second Saturday for wich I have no stats.

jimnyc, what about you? Did you experiment the same problem again?

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by transgenik
This is getting very annoying... I had no rollover for my logs yesterday. It's the second Saturday for wich I have no stats.

jimnyc, what about you? Did you experiment the same problem again?

Mine did not rollover properly last night either.

Just rename your log files. Delete access_log.8 and start lowering the others. Rename access_log to access_log.1 and run your stats program on that file for yesterday. A new access_log file will eventually be re-created. Mine was re-created within 10 minutes.

[transgenik]

Hum... this got me some of the last hours, but nothing for yesterday. :(

grrr...

But thanks a lot for your help anyway, jimnyc !

[jimnyc]

Originally posted by transgenik
Hum... this got me some of the last hours, but nothing for yesterday. :(

grrr...

But thanks a lot for your help anyway, jimnyc !

Try running it against access_log.2 and see if you pick up yesterday and then just change it back - it can't hurt!

[NMS]

My awstats work fine simply because I use the access log ... rotation does not effect my awstats

[B&T]

Originally posted by nmsupplies
My awstats work fine simply because I use the access log ... rotation does not effect my awstats
Then you are missing some stats in the hour of roll-over. If you use the current file, say every hour, then in the hour of roll you missed some stats because the file was rolled. But if you don't want all your stats . . . that works.

[NMS]

I roll 5 minutes before midnight so I loose 5 minutes of statistics .. for me that is not a bid deal.

[B&T]

Originally posted by nmsupplies
I roll 5 minutes before midnight so I loose 5 minutes of statistics .. for me that is not a bid deal.
You should look at your times. Your logs do not roll at midnight. Mine roll anywhere within about a 45 minute window. Look at the time stamps on the last 8 rolled logs. If you run a 24 hour site you could be missing 3-5% of your data. But you may not need accurate data. Or you may not have an active site during that hour. I am just making the point for those who may want accurate stats.

Edit >> ouch! had to fix all those typos.

[NMS]

i update every 5 minutes to the hour. The maximum I can loose is 30-45 minutes and this is at 9am so it is not a problem for my stats.

However I see your point

[B&T]

The real question remains. Why is it so hard to get the rollover of the logs right? This should be on the todo list for someone at Powweb to check on each night.

Mine got quite messed up again last night. This moring there was no access_log.1 - and access_log.2 had yesterdays data. Like it tried to roll twice. So I copied access_log.2 to create an access_log.1 - hopefully it will roll right tonight.

[transgenik]

nmsupplies, I would *love* to use acces log, but I also have the second problem described here:
http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29072

which makes my capacity to update (manually or automatically) totally random! :( :( :( :( :(

There really is a problem on the server side that should be fixed with both:
- the logs rollover
- the server's capacity to analyze logs that reach a certain size (I don't see what any of us could do about it: PowWeb has to fix something on their side to make things work)

[NMS]

To solve the big file problem, you might want to consider a daily update using cron

[transgenik]

I finally went with nmsupplies' suggestion. I may miss a few hours when the logs roll, but at least, the update goes fine. :D

I've put it at 15 to the hour (1h45, 2h45 and so on); is there a better choice to minimize the problem of losing stats when logs roll?

[meetn2veg]

I'm also having a few weird goings on! My stats didn't complete on the 21st Nov, and as of the 16th Nov my cronjob for phpAdsNew hasn't been doing it's hourly update nor sending out it's weekly reports to my advertisers. Yet I haven't done anything to the crontab file nor the stats config file.

That alone says to me it's a server-side issue. I will contact Support now to see what they say?!?

Any thoughts from anyone here would be appreciated.

Regards
Richard.