[analog-help] monthly stats

[Aengus]

On Tuesday, July 18, 2006 3:07 AM [EDT],
Marian Vicena <vicky at ultranet.sk> wrote:

>> The simplest and most effective way to use cachefiles is to create a
>> seperate cachefile for each logfile. Then, when you want to create a
>> weekly or monthly report, run Analog against just the cachefiles.
>
> So everyday I create new cache, e.g. cache1.db, cache2.db, etc. until
> cache31.db and then when running the monthly analog process I define
> in the appropriate config all those 31 cache??.db files with CACHEFILE
> directive? Is this what you are advising me?

I'd advise that you don't use cache files at all - they can be confusing, 
and severely limit the flexibility of Analog (you can't reliably modify your 
reports if they are based on cache files). Therefore you shouldn't use cache 
files until you have been using Analog long enough to be entirely satisied 
with your Analog reports, and that you won't be changing them.

The simplest error that you can make with cache files is to include the same 
information twice in the cache file when making a cumulative cache file. The 
simplest way to avoid this is to create a cache file for each logfile.
http://analog.cx/docs/cache.html#cacheproc

>> Alternatively, you can also run Analog against yesterdays cachefile
>> and yesterdays logfile to create a new cachefile that you will use
>> with todays logfile, etc. But if you're not careful, you can end up
>> counting the same traffic multiple times.
>
> Can you show me example on how to do this?

Not really - I've never used cache files, so if the description above 
doesn't make sense, I'd rather not make it any more detailed. Deleting 
logfiles involves throwing data away, and I don't want to offer advice that 
might cause problems further down the road.

>> Unless you're dealing with several gigabytes of logs per day, simply
>> zipping your logs may be a more effective way to solve whatever
>> problems you were having in the first place.
>
> This will be done only in case I cannot figure out how to do it with
> analog without the need to keep all the logs.

You haven't said why you want to get rid of the logs. How big are they? How 
long are your reports taking to run?

Aengus