Is AWstats a resource hog?

[bellgamin]

I lurk in several forums haunted by web hosts and webmasters. Lately I've noticed rumblings about AWstats being a resource hog.

To illustrate, the following is a quote from a web host named Matt
As you all know a certain server in particular has been acting up lately.

To better improve the hosting environment on ALL servers, I've been forced to make a change. AwStats will no longer be running on the servers.

To let you all in on WHY this change is being made, please bear with me here.

No matter when I look at the running processes on ANY of the servers, AwStats is always among those listed. And it's listed near the top.

If this was the deciding factor for any of you to choose ***hostname*** please let me know and I _MAY_ (most likely not ) be able to install a single instance of AwStats on your account. If you were really looking into AwStats and HAVE to have it, let me know and I can get you a refund.

Regards, Matt
Interesting, wot?
bellgamin

[admin]

Awstats is quite the hog. Running a shared webhost is a continual decision of balancing the needs/features/performance of a single customer against the needs/features/performance of everyone.....oh and at the same time, try to make a profit.

[Gade Terbob]

Is AWstats less "hoggish" when the ip function is disabled?

[Nedani]

Originally posted by Gade Terbob
Is AWstats less "hoggish" when the ip function is disabled?
I don't think so. It will be slower but I don't think will use such a great amount of resources. I would like to know what Danny thinks about it.

[admin]

Well, it is certainly less "hoggish". Everything you turn on or off has an impact. It also depends on the size of the sites a server has on it. If a server is full of sites that use 1G or so of traffic, then turning it on probably wouldn't hurt anyone or anything. But on servers where there are several 30G+ sites, this can be a major deal. One of our higher traffic customers that frequents this board requires 1hour for the server to process his logs daily.

[Gade Terbob]

Wow!! Bet that customer isn't me or Bell.........

Do you mean an hour just to process the text based server log files WITHOUT IP lookups??

[admin]

That is exactly what I mean. WITHOUT lookups.

[Gade Terbob]

Tell me this. I seriously considered your suggestion for webtrends, but $500 is out of the question. Do you (or anybody else on this board) have a suggestion on how to go about producing visitor information "off server"? Have any of you ever used:
http://www.123loganalyzer.com/index.html ? Does that satisfy the "off server" requirement? Even if you have only thirty hits in a month, that is still a lot of "copy and paste" to do manual lookups.

[admin]

I don't have any experience with that log analysis software so I really can't comment on it.

[Nedani]

You can download the log files and use Awstats or Webalizer (with whatever configuration you want) on your computer. Free! :)

[Gade Terbob]

I really am not playing dense here. But to be ran on a pc, would it require a "server" on the pc?
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_setup.html

I'm aware that there are several Apache shells available.

[Nedani]

No. The server is on AOH. You can run awstats from command line and generate static html pages with your stats. You can view them with any browser directly from your disk. You only need Perl for windows. You can download it from activestate.com. I never did this but they say it is a feature of that program.

[Bison]

Originally posted by Gade Terbob
I really am not playing dense here. But to be ran on a pc, would it require a "server" on the pc?
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/docs/awstats_setup.html

I'm aware that there are several Apache shells available.

Yes, you would need to have Apache installed on your local computer (there are many installation packages for Windows). You would also need the other requirement installed such as Perl and any modules neccessary.

[Rodzilla]

Here's an interesting point to ponder:

Which is worse? Having AwStats process 1 GB of daily information for an hour each day, or having the user spend several hours downloading their log every day?

[admin]

What is worse, having to spend hours downloading your log, or your site running slow for hours every day?

[Gade Terbob]

When you download your log, why must you d/l the whole file? Can't you just d/l the last 24 hrs?

[Rodzilla]

Nope, you have to download the whole thing each time. Which really eats up bandwidth. And having the site slow for an hour each day...doesn't it run at low traffic hours such as 12 AM - 4 AM?

[bellgamin]

I have 2 questions...

#1- Just as a matter of curiosity, is it possible to have AWstats run only for those sites that request it?

#2- Inasmuch as an orange is called an "orange," why isn't a grape called a "purple?"

[admin]

1. I wish!!!
2. I am completely clueless.

[Gade Terbob]

When an orange is not ripe, could it be called a "green"?

[Rodzilla]

I'm going to bet that the color "orange" came after the fruit "orange." Maybe... :)

[rlane]

In that case I will say the chicken came before the egg.