Documentation
ACCESS PORTAL ANALYZER:  V1.0


System Requirements

  • Unix, NT, Linux
  • Designed for Apache Style Logs
  • Perl 5
  • Ability to run crontab recommended
  • Ability to reset logfiles desired

Preliminaries

  • Determine the path to PERL 5 on your web server host.  Note that some web hosting companies run both PERL 4 and PERL 5.  Make ABSOLUTELY sure you are not setting this up under PERL 4.  Ask your administrator if you are not sure.
  • Download the tarfile for this program and save it to your desktop.
  • Unpack the tar archive on your desktop using a program that unpacks UNIX TAR ARCHIVES. If you don't have such a program then download WINZIP FREE from SHAREWARE.COM
  • After you have unpacked the TAR archive you will have a collection of folders and files on your desktop.  Now you have to do some basic editing of each of these files (or at least some of them).  Use a text editor such as wordpad, notepad, BBEdit, simpletext, or teachtext to edit the files.  These are NOT WORD PROCESSOR DOCUMENTS they are just simple TEXT files so don't save them as word processor documents or save them with extentions such as .txt or they will NOT WORK.   Note that there may be a some files inside of folders which are "blank".   This is normal.

Preparing the CGI scripts

Define Path To PERL 5

The first step is to open up each and every file that has a .cgi extention and edit line number one of each script.  Each of the cgi scripts is written in perl 5. For your scripts to run they must know where perl 5 is installed on your web server. The path to perl 5 is defined to a cgi script in the first line of the file. In each of the cgi scripts the first line of code looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

If the path to perl 5 on your web server is different from /usr/bin/perl you must edit the first line of each cgi script to reflect the correct path. If the path to perl 5 is the same no changes are necessary. If you do not know the path to perl 5 ask the webmaster or system administrator at your server site.  

Configure the .cgi files

portal.cgi (realtime operation)

There are two variable paths to edit inside of portal.cgi.  portal.cgi is what you will use to generate your results if you are not running this by crontab.

$logfile = "/path/to/your/logfile";

This is the absolute path to your server log file

$rooturl = "http://www.yourdomain.com";

This is the url to your index page

portal.cgi (crontab operation)

First you need to rename this file to portal.cgi.  There are two variable paths to edit inside of portal.cgi.   portal.cgi is what you will use to generate your results if you are not running this by crontab.

$logfile = "/path/to/your/logfile";

This is the absolute path to your server log file

$rooturl = "http://www.yourdomain.com";

This is the url to your index page

$results = "/path/to/html/portal/index.html";

This is the path to the results file that will be created when crontab executes portal.cgi

Notes for running in realtime

Set the permission of portal.cgi to 755.   Your results can be obtained by simply calling the url of the script.   http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/portal.cgi.  Note that if you have large log files you will be waiting awhile.  If it takes over 400 seconds your browser may time out.  Its really better to run this by crontab that way the results are created everyday for you and you dont have to wait for anything.

Notes for running via crontab

Crontab is just a file that runs on your server which acts like an alarm clock.  You add tasks to the crontab file and when the "alarm" goes off the task is completed.  There is alot of junk to learn about editing crontab files which you will have to consult your unix book or ask your system admin about for your specific server.  I have enclosed an example crontab file for you to look at which executes portal.cgi every night at midnight.  You can set   it to run once per minute or once per year for that matter. 

If you are running this by crontab you will have to chmod 777 the directory that your results will be created inside of ($results).   You also have to chmod 755 portal.cgi.