Resolved AWStats no stats, just a placeholder

[GuiltySpark]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.58 #2

Hi,

I have a VPS that has been live for 3 months, but I cannot get AWStats to work.

I simply get the placeholder message, here's what I have tried:

1. Confirmed it's set in Hosting Setttings.
2. Tried changing to Webalizer (which works) and then back again to AWStats.
3. Tried forcing stats update with
   • plesk sbin statistics --calculate-all
4. Uninstalled/reinstalled the extension and forced another stats update.
5. Rebooted the server.

I know there are a ton of articles out there, it's just that most of them are at least a couple of years old.

 

[Peter Debik]

What do you mean by "placeholder message"? Could you please show an example?

 

[GuiltySpark]

What do you mean by "placeholder message"? Could you please show an example?

This is the message returned when you go to /plesk-stat/webstat-ssl/index.html:

This is the placeholder for Web statistics. If you see this page, that means that statistics for your server was not gathered yet, or bandwidth was not used. Statistics is typically set to run once every 24 hours. If you do not see a change to this page in the next 24 hours contact your server administrator for assistance.

This page has been automatically generated by Plesk.

 

[Peter Debik]

Some things you can check:
- If you are using SELinux, disable it or set it to "permissive".
- Run grep ' $' /etc/psa/psa.conf. If it outputs AWStats lines, there are whitespaces at the end of the lines. Remove them.
- Verify that all AWStats directories defined in /etc/psa/psa.conf exist and are populated with AWstats files.
- Verify that /etc/awstats exists.
- Verify that a configuration file for your domain exists in /usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/

 

[GuiltySpark]

- If you are using SELinux, disable it or set it to "permissive".

Showing my ignorance here but I don't know if I'm running this or not, there are no getenforce or setstatus commands available, so I assume not.

- Run grep ' $' /etc/psa/psa.conf. If it outputs AWStats lines, there are whitespaces at the end of the lines. Remove them.

Returned nothing.

- Verify that all AWStats directories defined in /etc/psa/psa.conf exist and are populated with AWstats files.

AWSTATS_ETC_D /etc/awstats - contains 2 .conf files
AWSTATS_BIN_D /usr/lib/cgi-bin - contains 1 file : awstats.pl
AWSTATS_TOOLS_D /usr/share/awstats/tools - contains 4 .pl files
AWSTATS_DOC_D /usr/share/awstats - contains multiple folders and files (icon, lang, lib, plugins, tools)

- Verify that /etc/awstats exists.

As above contains 2 .conf files.

- Verify that a configuration file for your domain exists in /usr/local/psa/etc/awstats/

Contains 4 configuration files anon, ftp, http, https

I scanned the configuration file and everything "looks" OK. It says at the top these config files are automatically generated and not to modify the file, but there must be something inside of Plesk that is generating them?

 

[GuiltySpark]

Peter,

I don't understand why, but I checked this morning and it's all working. The placeholder message did say to wait 24 hours, but I thought I had overridden this by running the "statistics --calculate-all". I don't understand why it would start working now when the site has been live for 3 months (unless the reinstall did it?).

I do have one last question if you don't mind?

I don't understand the url for accessing the Web Statistics as in "/plesk-stat/webstat-ssl/index.html", this is neoither a folder/file or link in my document root, so how does this work?

 

[Peter Debik]

When you look into /var/www/vhosts/system/<your domain>/conf/*.conf files you can see that the web server configuration files create many virtual directories. These are not physical paths on the system, but take the data from the physical paths, map it to a virtual web server path and deliver it to the browser.

 

[GuiltySpark]

Great, thanks for the explanation.