okay I lost my reply due to session log out
But I reckon I solved my problem.
Firstly, I dropped the "awstats_configure.pl" approach immediately, as it started to manipulate apache and plesks "httpd.conf".
I found the plesk psa statistics manager here:
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/webstatmng
Exectued it with these options
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/webstatmng --set-configs --stat-prog=awstats --domain-name=<mydomain.com>
Running it gave lots of problems. But they all went down to the fact that it needed
a file named "/etc/awstats/awstats.model.conf", which doesnt exist at "/etc/awstats/".
it tried to translate that file into these four:
/usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/awstats.<mydomain.com>-ftp.conf
/usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/awstats.<mydomain.com>-http.conf
/usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/awstats.<mydomain.com>-https.conf
/usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/awstats.<mydomain.com>-anon_ftp.conf
But in "/etc/awstats/" are three other files named "awstats.conf.ftp", "awstats.conf.smtp" "awstats.conf.web". I looked into those, noticed they are more like templates and roughly the same. Their character also isnt just defined by the file extension but by an option inside.
So first of all I did a backup.
Then copied one of the existing files and renamed it to look like the file the "webstatmng" needed, hoping that it wasnt more than a name based confusion.
cp /etc/awstats/awstats.conf.web /etc/awstats/awstats.model.conf
Ran "webstatmng" just like above again. and no complaints or well no output at all. All four files it couldnt create before existed and looked ok.
So fingers crossed, tried to recalculate statistics
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics --calculate-one --domain-name=<mydomain.com>
And well, it worked. Some complaints about non-existing subdirectories in the domains statistics folder.
To be safe, I reset statistics to "none" via plesk control panel and then back to "awstats".
checked the web presentation and it looked ok, all statistics zero but well.
Accessed my domain, ran "/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics " with same options again.
It showed no more directory related errors, noticed the change in the access log.
And the statistics web presentation registered my access to the site.
Guess karma was on my side so far
Regards.