How to generate stats for IIS log files using Webalizer

While sorting through some of my many backups of old machines I came across a whole load of IIS log files for an old site of mine so I thought I’d process them and generate some statistics. I’ve used Webalizer quite a few times before for generating stats on Apache log files and as v2.01 is available via Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu I thought I’d use this.

Unfortunately v2.01 doesn’t support support the W3C format that IIS uses, looks like it does now in v2.20 though. However IIS includes a utility called ‘convlog‘ for converting it’s logs files to the NCSA common log file format that Webalizer does support. So I fired up my old Windows XP box, installed IIS and used the following command to convert the log files:

convlog -ie ex*.log

Once that had processed all the log files (by default it creates a copy of each log file) I copied them back to my Ubuntu laptop and used ‘cat‘ to combine all the files into one big log file:

cat ex*.nsca > master.log

All that was left to do was create a config file to tell Webalizer what it should do, so I copied the default config file and customised the options to my needs. Then ran ‘webalizer‘ using the customised config file:

./webalizer -c master.conf

Once it’s performed it’s magic you should have a bunch of detailed reports in the location you specified in the config file!

AVG 8 – Invalid update control CTF file

For a few days now AVG Anti-Virus Free 8 has been complaining about it’s database being out of date. When I’ve tried manually running the update feature I get the following error:

“Invalid Update Control CTF File”

I finally got round to doing something about this yesterday, I did a quick scan for all .CTF files and found a couple in:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\avg8\update\download

I deleted the .CTF files in this folder (I left the .BIN files alone) and tried running the update feature again. Ran without a problem this time and downloaded an definitions update fine.

I’ve got no idea how AVG got itself into this state but it was simple to fix. I’m running Windows XP by the way, the location of the files may be different on Windows Vista.

Alternative to iPhoto?

I’ll be retiring my trusty PowerBook G4 very soon and until I decide on what my next laptop will be I’ll be moving all my data onto my Windows XP desktop PC for the time being. I’ve been using iPhoto to manage all my photos so I’m now looking for a Windows based alternative. The first one I thought of was Google Picasa so I’ll try that out. Does anyone have any other recommendations?