Re: [cobalt-users] Truncating oversized request field

[Nick <nicknn@xxxxxxx>]

Webalizer is working fine.
I have problem with cobalt control panel statistic section.
The file is resetting every day, so i can not measure the traffic.
Every day, i get only the traffic for this specific day.
For every month, as total traffic i get the traffic from the last day of 
the month.
So i can not charge my customers in bandwidth basis.
Any suggestions?

Message: 16
Reply-To: "Carrie Bartkowiak" <ravencarrie@xxxxxxxx>
From: "Carrie Bartkowiak" <ravencarrie@xxxxxxxx>
To: <cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [cobalt-users] Truncating oversized request field
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 11:00:43 -0500
> Hi.
> My statistic logfiles are resetting
> every day.I Think this is a something wrong with my cron.daily.
> Every day i get this message.
> Can anyone help me to fix this problem?
> Thanks
<snip>
> Warning: Truncating oversized request field
If either of you had read the Webalizer files, or done a search for
'Truncating oversized request field' in the archives, you wouldn't be
worried.
Things are not being reset. This is not a problem with your Cobalt. Tech
support at Cobalt shouldn't need to deal with this, you should have read the
documentation first.
Very long request strings are getting put into your log files. Usually this
is from a search engine link that is a mile and a half long.
Webalizer is set up to only recognize so many characters in any given field.
If any strings are longer than its default field, it TRUNCATES - plain
terms, CUTS OFF - the rest of the string that doesn't fit.
Example:
Let's say Webalizer is set to only recognize the first 8 characters in a
request string. But the page requests made to your server are longer than 10
characters, such as:
http://www.domain.com
So, Webalizer will cut off (TRUNCATE) anything that is bigger (OVERSIZED)
than 10 characters in the REQUESTed url; leaving you with:
http://www
Then it will send you a warning letting you know that there was a url in the
log file that was bigger than it could handle, and it had to cut it down to
make it more manageable and to save room.
Obviously Webalizer's default string size is going to be longer than 10
characters; this is only an example; don't go freaking out wondering how
you're going to get any stats from a 10-character string and wanting to know
how to change the 10-character default.
How can you fix this?
Well, if you read your Webalizer documentation you'll see that you can
suppress oversized referrer and request field warnings, if I remember right
you do this by entering in a simple pound (#) sign in your Webalizer
configuration file. If you read the cobalt user's list archives you'll also
find this information, and tons of notes saying not to worry about it.
So, you either ignore it, or you RTFM and learn how to set Webalizer so that
it doesn't send you these annoying useless notices whenever it has to cut
off huge long strings.
Or you can quit using the GET method in the pages on your site so you aren't
putting mile-long http requests into your log file. (Of course, this won't
stop the referrer strings from search engines from doing the same thing.)
Forgive me if I seem snippy.
1. I just woke up and
2. this is covered SO many times in the archives.
Believe it or not, people really do have these problems before you do, and
get answers, and you can find it all in the archives.
Carrie Bartkowiak