Re: [Summary-Talk] Need Help with Unique Hosts Report

[Jason Linhart <jason@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1/26/04 10:08 AM Bruce O'Leary (bruce@peacemakercircle.org) wrote:

>I have one final problem that I would really like to solve. I'm running 
>Apache with NCSA Combined log format, and the logs are only recording 
>two visiting hosts: the server's own IP address, and another that is 
>within our domain. If I add our domain to the "Domains (Servers) to 
>ignore)" list in the filters, I get no reports at all.

First off, you appear to be mixing up two different fields/ideas here. 
Visitors, host IP addresses, the addresses of the machines used to browse 
your site are filtered with "Hosts (visitors) to ignore". "Domains 
(Servers) to ignore)" is used to filter out domains served by your server 
(in case you are serving multiple domains). If you are filtering out the 
domain served by your server it is no wonder your reports are blank.

>So, I guess I'm looking for some help in how to configure the logs so 
>they properly record the host IP address for each visitor.

Assuming that it is really visitor's IP addresses that are always coming 
up the same, then you are probably serving through a reverse proxy 
server. A reverse proxy is a machine that appears to the outside world to 
be your web server but is actually just a buffer between the outside 
world and the real server. In this situation you may well need to get the 
logs from the reverse proxy server, instead of from the main server, 
because reverse proxy servers don't normally send all requests through to 
the main server. In some cases, when all requests are getting passed 
through, there are special ways to configure your server to log the 
original IP address, but the details vary depending on the reverse proxy 
server and the main server's software.

Another possibility entirely is that you have the server configured 
incorrectly, or Summary is misreading the log files, so that it is not 
actually logging/reading the visitors IP address in the field where that 
value normally appears. You need to check your server configuration and 
log format to verify this.

Good Luck
Jason

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Jason@Summary.Net
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