Awstats-report Of Nonauthenticated Users

[David1776]

According to the Authenticated users section in Awstats, in addition to the authenticated users who are viewing a password protected secton of my webpage, there is an entry "other logins(and/or anynomous users)" which seems to indicate that nonauthenticated users are viewing my passworded page. Am I interpreting this right and is there a likely explanation of how this is happening? Incidentally, while the "other logins" lists number of pages viewed, hits, and bandwidth information, it doesn't include "Last visit" like the information provided for the "authenticated users." Thank you for any help you can provide.

 

--David

[TweezerMan]

I don't have any password protect pages on my web site, and the "Other logins (and/or anonymous users)" section of my AWStats appears to show the total stats for all users who have viewed my site.

 

I imagine it is the same for your site - the "Other logins (and/or anonymous users)" section is showing the stats for users who have viewed unprotected pages in your site. The stats details for those users should be viewable elsewhere on the AWStats page.

 

If you wanted to verify that this was indeed the case, I imagine that you would need to download the server log (Raw Access Logs in CPanel) and examine it / analyze it.

[David1776]

Thank you David. I feel better now. It does seem a bit confusing that nonauthenticated users were listed under the heading of authenticated (presumably through password) users. Anyway, I tried your excellent suggestion to view the raw access logs but I was unable to view the *.tar format. I tried to open it in Wordpad but no luck. My PKZIP tried to open it, but unless I did something wrong, was unable.

[TCH-Bruce]

In cpanel click on Raw Log File and it will download a .gz file which you can open with WinZip.

 

There will be a text file inside the archive the same name as your domain name. You could open that file with any text editor.

[Deverill]

Your file after unzipping will be named like your domain, which for most is something.com -- you have to do an Open from your text editor instead of double clicking the log file in Windows or it will think it's a program and try to run it resulting in an error.

[David1776]

Thank you Bruce and Jim for the extra help. I'm confused, though. When I click on "raw access logs" it tries to save a .tar type of file-- not a .gz type of file. Am I missing something?

[TCH-Bruce]

If I go under Manage Accounts under FTP I can download the raw log file uncompressed.

 

If I access it from the main panel in cpanel I get a gzipped (.gz) file. If you are getting a tar file you should still be able to open that with WinZip.

[David1776]

Thank you for the suggestion Bruce, but I seem to be having problems. My PKZIP does have an option to convert a .tar, but somehow it isn't able to convert my log file.

 

I tried your suggestion to select "ftp manager" from the main cpanel menu. Then I selected "FTP Accounts." At the bottom of "FTP Accounts" I saw "You can download your raw access logs at the following URLs using the login deeperd_logs and your account password:" There were three ftp links to choose from. Two saved some type of ms-dos application which only gave me a black area on my screen. The other was a link that didn't work. Obviously I'm doing something wrong because I didn't have to enter a password or login anywhere.

 

I'm not sure I need to spend $29 for WinZip when PKZIP typically works for me. I am also unsure of whether the raw log will easily display such information as who saw what specific pages. I noted in the CPanel documentation for the raw access logs "These logs are only really useful if you have a preferred reporting tool that you prefer to use, rather than the variety of reporting tools presented in this section," so I wonder if I will need some other utility to make the raw access log useful.

 

--David

[TCH-Bruce]

The ms-dos application is not an ms-dos application. If your domain ends in .com the file will also end in .com but it is a text file and you can open it with Notepad or some other text editor.

 

As for not wanting to purchase Winzip you can still download it and use it in evaluation mode for 30 days.

 

You can read through the log and it will list every page and image that was accessed on your site. There are site analysis tools out there and some are free.

[TCH-Rob]

I just right click the file and select open with and then notepad.

[David1776]

Thank you Bruce and Rob for your last suggestions. I did try an evaluation version of WinZip and was able to view the log file by double clicking on the file name which then gave me an option to launch WinZip. By right clicking on the file name (within WinZip) on either "view with Notepad.exe" or right clicking "view with internal viewer" (which looked better) I was able to see it. The log file is definately cool and now that I see it it is worth buying WinZip to have the feature.

 

Thanks again for your help!

 

--David

[TCH-Bruce]

Gald we could help.