[Pkg-awstats-devel] Bug#590074: awstats: DO NOT use cron scripts to update stats database

[Ximin Luo]

Package: awstats
Version: 6.9.5~dfsg-2
Severity: important

Currently this package installs a cron job that runs every ten minutes. This
is a VERY bad idea:

- if logrotate(8) runs during those 10 minutes, some log entries will fail to
  be accounted for by awstats

- it wastes resources parsing the same log files every 10 minutes, especially
  if they get big

- it makes logcheck(8) spam my inbox every hour due to the cron job failing
  every 10 minutes

A better solution is to hook the update script onto the logrotate(8) entries
for any installed webservers (eg. /etc/logrotate.d/lighttpd,apache2). This
solves all of the 3 problems I just mentioned.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages awstats depends on:
ii  perl                          5.10.1-13  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

Versions of packages awstats recommends:
ii  libnet-xwhois-perl            0.90-3     Whois Client Interface for Perl5

Versions of packages awstats suggests:
pn  libgeo-ipfree-perl            <none>     (no description available)
ii  libnet-dns-perl               0.66-2     Perform DNS queries from a Perl sc
ii  libnet-ip-perl                1.25-2     Perl extension for manipulating IP
ii  liburi-perl                   1.54-1     module to manipulate and access UR
ii  lighttpd [httpd]              1.4.26-3   A fast webserver with minimal memo

-- no debconf information