Wusage: Silly Name, Serious Stats!

Wusage 8.0 Manual

Running Wusage: Generating Statistics

Generating Statistics

Now that you have a Wusage configuration file, you are ready to begin taking advantage of Wusage by generating reports.

First, note that you usually will not want to run Wusage more often than once per day. It is recommended that you run Wusage shortly after midnight. However, you can run the program as often as you like, and you can "rotate" (remove or archive) your log files immediately afterwards if you wish. Removing old log files will help performance!

If you have just created a new configuration file through the user interface, and you have not used the Edit Configuration File pages to make any changes, then you are currently configured to produce daily, weekly, monthly, annual and cumulative summary reports.

You will find that Wusage generates reports for the epoch in progress, as well as for time periods that have ended. These reports are useful advance information about the day, week, month, quarter, or year in progress. These figures are also "scaled up" and included in historical graphs, if a significant fraction of the data is already available. You can, however, turn off this feature using the No Partial Reports (nopartial) option.

VERY, VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: you may want to keep backups of your log data in case you change your mind about what types of analysis are important to you. What if you decide a year from now that it is very important to see how often a certain document was accessed? Log data is important to your organization -- make a backup copy when you remove it.

Generating Statistics through the User Interface

First, make sure that Wusage is running. See the Configuring Wusage section for instructions on how to start up the program. If the program is not already running, you will need to use the Browse Configuration Files button to locate the configuration file you wish to work with, and then use the Open Configuration File button to open that configuration file.
SECURITY NOTE

We do NOT recommend running the Wusage web-based user interface as root under Unix. Under Windows NT, the web-based user interface should only be used as the administrative user once, in order to unlock the software so that it can be accessed by the AT scheduling command; see the Running Wusage Automatically section. Although Wusage is not designed to provide access to any unrelated information, it is never a good idea to run applications as root when this can be easily avoided by using another account.

When you have opened an existing configuration file, or you have just finished creating a new configuration file, you will next see a web page that looks like this. Of course, the buttons shown below are examples only. Use the buttons in the actual configuration editor.
Control PageUp to Main Menu Page
Open Configuration Is:/home/www/wusage7.0/tests/smallbcom/skbyserver.conf
Use this button to update your statistics to reflect the latest available log data. You must use this option at least once before you can view any statistics. Update Statistics Now
Use this button to re-generate your statistics from the beginning. Use this button ONLY if you want to discard your previous results completely! Re-Generate COMPLETELY
Use this button to view your latest statistics. Depending on your configuration, you can also do this via a regular web server. View Statistics Now
Use this button to answer a question that is not already answered by the reports you have generated. For example, using this button, you can find out how many accesses were made to a specific document, or how many visits came from a particular address. Quick Queries
Use this button to edit any aspect of your configuration, including filtering, log file locations, report settings, and so on. Edit Configuration

Fill out these fields if you wish to re-generate reports for a specific period of time. Then click Update Statistics For Time Period, below.
MonthDayYear
From______
To______
Update Statistics For Time Period


Wusage 7.0 BETA RELEASE 7Manual
This is the main control page for this configuration file.

At least 99% of the time, you will simply want to click on the Update Statistics Now button. When you do this, Wusage will begin to analyze your log data. The length of time this takes can vary depending on the options you have selected and the amount of log data you have, as well as the speed of the computer that is running Wusage. The program will display the number of log file lines that have been analyzed so far as it proceeds. Depending on how many lines have been analyzed previously, you may not see feedback from the program often. Nothing is wrong. Do not press stop!

In rare situations, such as when you have changed your configuration and you want to re-generate reports that have already been written, you will want to fill in the starting and ending dates that need to be re-analyzed and click on the Update Statistics For Time Period button. This feature is mainly used after making a configuration file change. It is also useful if the program was mistakenly used to analyze the wrong log data. If you edit your configuration file and run wusage again, the program will NOT re-generate reports it has already written unless you use Update Statistics For Time Period, or the Re-Generate COMPLETELY button.

Moving On

You are now ready to move on to the Interpreting the Reports of Wusage section. The remainder of this section covers an alternate command-line approach to running the program.

Generating Statistics From The Command Line

Note: this option is not available to MacOS users.

To generate statistics from the command line instead of through the user interface, cd to the directory containing the program and enter the following command:

wusage -c wusage.conf    (or wusage.con under DOS)
Substitute the filename of your configuration file for wusage.conf.

Important Unix note: Unix users may need to type ./wusage, not just wusage, to be sure that the program is found.

Note: here it is assumed that your configuration file has been created and has the name wusage.conf (or wusage.con under DOS). See the Configuring Wusage section for more information.

If this is the first time you have run the program, a welcoming message will be displayed. Under normal circumstances, no output will be printed on the screen by Wusage! If your log file is large, it may take some time for wusage to complete its run, especially if the DNS option has been turned on. If your log already contains hostnames for most sites, or if speed is an issue, do not select the DNS option in your configuration file, or set the DNS option to fast, which looks up names that appear in your reports only but does not work with the Ignored Sites (ignoresites) and Chart Top Domains (domains) options.

Note: if your log file is empty, Wusage may indicate that no input was available. This is normal and the message will go away when your log file actually contains accesses. If you do have accesses in log file and you still get this message, your log file may not be in a format that Wusage supports.


Previous: Configuring Wusage
Next: Interpreting the Reports of Wusage
Table of Contents
Topical Configuration Editor Reference
Alphabetical Configuration Editor Reference
Alphabetical Configuration File Reference
Glossary of Frequently Used Terms

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