Analog 5.03: Errors and warnings

First, you should understand the difference between a crash, an error, a warning, and a debugging message. First, a crash is when analog exits prematurely, without producing the whole output file. The system might give a message, but analog will not give one of its own messages. Analog should never crash. If it does crash, please tell me about it.

An error is something which stops analog finishing its job. Whenever an error is detected, analog gives a message starting something like analog: Fatal error: and will then tell you what type of thing went wrong before quitting.

A warning is a problem which is not fatal to analog: it will keep on with its processing. These vary from the possibly serious, such as files which could not be found, to purely informational. They produce a message starting analog: Warning. You can turn warnings off using the WARNINGS command.

Finally, a debugging message gives information on the state of the program. They just begin with a single code letter followed by a colon. You don't get any debugging messages unless you've asked for them.

If you want to send these messages to a file instead of to the screen, you can use the ERRFILE command. To tell analog the width of your screen for these messages, you can use the ERRLINELENGTH command.

Now I shall describe all the possible errors and warnings in detail.

Errors

Ran out of memory: cannot continue

Analog ran out of memory. Try increasing the memory available to the process, if your operating system will allow it, or using the LOWMEM commands.

Cannot ignore mandatory configuration file

See the section in the Readme on the mandatory configuration file.

Can't find language file
Language file too short
Language file too long
Language file contains excessively long lines

Analog can't run without a well-formed language file. See the documentation on language files.

Attempted to read more than 50 configuration files

The most likely explanation for this is that you have accidentally created a loop using the CONFIGFILE command, for example if a configuration file includes itself.

Incorrect default given in anlghead.h
Default given in anlghead.h too short

If you've compiled your own version, and you've specified an incorrect configuration in the file anlghead.h, analog gives up to allow you to fix it.

Failed to open output file for writing

Analog couldn't create, or couldn't write to, the output file you specified.

Cache output file already exists: won't overwrite

Analog won't overwrite an old cache file. You must move or delete it yourself first.

OUTFILE and CACHEOUTFILE are the same

OUTFILE and CACHEOUTFILE both set to stdout

This can't be what you wanted, because one would overwrite the other.

OUTPUT NONE and CACHEOUTFILE none selected

You requested no output.

OUTPUT LATEX only available with US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1 character sets

The LaTeX output style only works with Western European languages because the standard LaTeX distribution doesn't contain the characters for other languages.

Warnings

C

invalid configuration specified

D

dubious configuration specified

E

ERRFILE command used

F

files missing or corrupt

L

apparent problems in logfiles

M

possibly problems in logfiles

R

turning off empty reports

Category C

Category D

LOGFORMAT with no subsequent logfile

You have specified a LOGFORMAT command, but no subsequent logfile to which it could be applied. Most likely you put the LOGFORMAT after the LOGFILE command. You must put the LOGFORMAT before the LOGFILE command or use DEFAULTLOGFORMAT instead. See the section on Specifying a log format for more details.

Offset not a multiple of 30
Offset more than 25 hours

The time offsets are meant to be for correcting between differences in time zones. These differences are usually multiples of 30 minutes between -25 and +25 hours. Maybe you specified the offset in hours instead of minutes by mistake, or something like that.

FROM time is later than the present

Usually this will mean that no entries are counted. Analog doesn't try and correct it in case the clock on your computer or your server is wrong -- but you would be better using TIMEOFFSET or LOGTIMEOFFSET to correct those clocks.

SORTBY doesn't match FLOOR
SORTBY doesn't match SUBSORTBY (or FLOOR/SUBFLOOR)
SORTBY (or FLOOR or GRAPH) isn't included in COLS

Within one report, it's helpful to your readers to have the sort methods and the floors compatible, and all included in the COLS. (See the section on Non-time reports).

Column N with SORTBY ALPHABETICAL/RANDOM

Numbering off the items when they're not in order of busyness is probably a mistake.

Time reports have not all got same value of BACK

It's usually helpful to have all the time reports running in the same direction.

Report contains no COLS

You've got an empty COLS list for one report, so you'll just get a list of names, not any information about them.

LOWMEM 3 prevents that item being cached

You're making a cache file, but one item is not being recorded because of a LOWMEM command, and will therefore not be saved in the cache file.

Category E

Redirecting future diagnostic messages

You've used an ERRFILE command to change the destination of errors, warnings, debugging and PROGRESSFREQ diagnostics. This is just warning you so that you don't miss any messages.

Category F

Can't auto-detect format of logfile

The LOGFORMAT is set to automatic detection, but the first line of the logfile is not in any of the standard formats. This error can often be generated when you try and specify your own LOGFORMAT but put it after the LOGFILE command so that it is not in effect for that logfile.

Logfile with ambiguous dates

Some servers, notably IIS and WebSite, record dates in their logfiles according to local conventions. Then if analog encounters 2/1/99, for example, it doesn't know whether it's the 2nd January or 1st February. This problem, and what to do about it, is described in more detail in the section on Choosing a logfile.

Failed to open domains file

In this case, all domains will be counted as "unknown domains".

Failed to open DNS input file

The first time you use DNS lookups, you don't have a DNS cache file, so you get this warning. Assuming you are using DNS WRITE, the message will go away next time you run analog.

DNS lock file already exists

To stop two copies of analog trying to write the DNS file at the same time, an empty "lock file" is created, which tells the second copy of analog to use DNS LOOKUP instead of DNS WRITE. If analog crashes, it may not delete its lock file. So if you get the "already exists" message even though no other copy of analog is running, you may need to delete the lock file yourself.

Category L

Large number of corrupt lines

This could indicate a problem with the logfile, or with the LOGFORMAT specification. The possible causes are described in the section about Choosing a logfile. If you specify DEBUG ON, analog will report where each line was corrupt.

Logfiles overlap: possible double counting

This means that two logfiles which were counting the same type of item overlapped in time. Because it's only based on the time period of the logfiles, not the actual entries, this may or may not indicate a genuine problem. It is a problem if you read the same logfile twice. Or maybe you used the cache file feature incorrectly. Or maybe your web server produces several logfiles, and your LOGFORMAT specification should have told analog to ignore some of the items in some of the logfiles. It is not a problem if the logfiles are in fact completely disjoint; for example if you analyse logfiles from two different virtual hosts. In this case, the statistics produced will still be correct.

Category M

Logfile contains lines with no [whatevers], which are being filtered

This is usually harmless. It is perhaps best explained by example. Suppose you are excluding certain files from the analysis, but that you are also analysing a browser log which just contains information about the browsers used, not which files they read. Then we can't exclude the browsers which read the excluded files, because we don't know which they were, so all browsers will be included.

Logfile contains lines with no file names (or bytes): page (or byte) counts may be low

If a logfile line doesn't contain a file name, analog will assume that the request wasn't for a page. Similarly, if it doesn't give the number of bytes transferred, analog will make the bytes zero. So the number of page requests or bytes credited to the other items on that line will then be too low.

Old-style cache file doesn't contain data on first-request times of items; so these may be overestimated

Cache files now contain the first-request time of each item. But if you read a cache file from an older version of analog, this data will not have been recorded, and so the last-request time will be used instead.

Cache file doesn't contain last-seven-day statistics

It is impossible for cache files to record the number of requests in the last 7 days, because the data would be wrong at the time the cache file was read.

Category R

Broken Pipe

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