WWW Count Frequently Asked Questions
sh: ar: not found, what's the
problem? 
1: Is there a support group or mailing list?
Answer: There is a mailing list setup for those who
couldn't get their question answered on this page. To subscribe to the mailing
list for WWWCount, please go to the URL: http://lists.yeehaw.net/mailman/listinfo/wwwcount/
NOTE: This list is a help forum, people will ask questions which might seem simple and annoying to you. Therefore, subscribe to the mailing list only if you like to help others.
Thanks to Ashley M. Kirchner for creating and maintaining the list.
2. My CGI scripts don't work. What's
wrong?
Answer: Simply linking from your page to an
executable program or script won't cause it to be run by the server. There are
two common arrangements: either files in directories specially designated by the
server administrator are executed as CGI scripts, or files with a special
extension (such as .cgi) are executed as CGI scripts.
These are just two possible ways your server might be configured. Many sites don't allow users to run CGI scripts at all. Consult your web server's administrator.
Taken from WWW FAQ
3.I get errors while compiling on SGI, what's the
problem? : libCombine.a
: - Too many arguments
*** Error code 1 (bu21)
*** Error code 1 (bu21)
To make it work, in libs/combine/Makefile, remove the line $(RANLIB) $@Or, try setting SHELL to sh, for example:
setenv SHELL "/bin/sh"
Thanks to avarro@CENTRCN.UMontreal.CA (12/07/95)
4. Why does the counter show "888888" all the
time?
Answer: The counter is running in strict mode
(look at count.cfg file). When the counter runs in strict mode, if the
browser does not return the environment variable HTTP_REFERER, the
counter will display the image 888888 instead of serving the counter. The
environment variable HTTP_REFERER should contain the web page running the
counter. Some browsers do not return this variable in <img GET method.
Technical notes: The way HTTP_REFERER environment variable gets
available to a CGI program is as follows: The browser sends a header like
Referer: http://foo.com/page.html, then according to the CGI 1.1 specification
the server can add HTTP_ followed by the header name and make it available to
CGI program as environment variable. But according to CGI spec, the server can
decide not to make these variables available to the CGI program. In this case,
the counter will show 888888. Also, if the browser decides not the send the
Referer header to the server, there will not be any environment variable called
HTTP_REFERER, and the counter will show 888888. Good news is, netscape and MS IE
both send Referer when <img src is is used to set an inline image, and apache
and all good web servers also make this variable available to the CGI programs.
5. The counter does not compile on UnixWare with
cc, why?
Answer: Note for UnixWare 2: Before running
the configure script, set and export the environment variable CC to the string
cc -Xc
6. The counter does not compile on Solaris with
cc, why?
Answer: If you are using Sun's stock cc on
Solaris, you may get errors about identifier redeclaration. Try defining
-D__STDC__=1 in Makefile, it might work. You should not have
any problem if you compile with gcc or ucb cc on Solaris.
7. I get an error message "Could not write to
counter file: x/y/sample.dat". What's the problem?
Answer: That means the user running the web server can not
write to the datafile. The correct way to make it work is to change the owner of
the datafile to the user running the web server and give read/write permission
to that user only. You can only do that if you're the super user. If you are not
the super user, you have to give read/write permission to world. In Unix, "chmod
666 file" will do that. But this will allow anyone to edit or delete your
datafile.
8. What does it mean when you say "user running
the web server"?
Answer: Web servers can be configured
to run the CGI program as a unique user and a group. In apache web server, the user and the group is
specified with the directive User and Group in httpd.conf file respectively. I
suggest you create a unique user and group first. For the user, put a * in the
password field in passwd file and use /bin/true as its shell. This way this user
will never be able to login to the system. And all CGI programs should be owned
by the user and read/write/execute permission to be given to that user only.
Most of all, make sure you look at all the CGI programs in your system. CGI
programs are always a security risk. But if you configured your server to
execute CGI programs as a unique non-privileged user, the damage to your system
will be minimal, in case security is compromised due to CGI programs.
9. The counter seems to display random number.
What's the problem?
Answer: If you do not specify a
datafile with df= parameter, the counter will display a random number.
10. I get an error message "Host foo.com is not
authorized". What's the problem?
Answer: Find the file
count.cfg.
Edit it with your favorite text editor. Add the hostname in the error message in
the section [authorized]. If you do not have access to the file, you have to ask
the person who installed the counter.
If you are running a system with many virtual domains, you will probably want
to list your IP addresses with wildcards. This prevents you from having to add
an entry every time a new virtual domain is added. As of version 2.4, the
referer host will be looked up in DNS if the USE_DNS directive is defined during
compilation. Look at the comments in file src/Makefile.in for
instructions.
For example, if you have the class C IP address of 192.160.166.[1-254], instead of listing every virtual host in this domain you could add:
192.160.166.*to your config file in the [authorized] section. Note that this feature will NOT work with versions prior to Count 2.4. Warning: If you compile with
-DUSE_DNS=1, then hostname is resolved with each CGI request.
This can be slow if your DNS server is busy or serving lots of requests. If DNS
server does not respond, the counter will hang until resolving request times
out.
11. What's the format of the data file?
Answer: The counter data file is a text file. The
format of this file is: digits:IP$
The line does not end
with new line.
Example: 56787654567237875:131.349.3.10$
The digits
are the numeric ASCII characters and IP is the IP number of the last host
visited the page. The $ at the end indicates the end of data. If you configured
the counter to count reload, the datafile might contain something like:
3432432434$
Here the $ indicates the end of data as
well.
Technical note: Before the release of Count 2.5 there was no $
to indicate the end of data. So ftruncate() was used to truncate the datafile
before writing. It was kind of risky, because if the system was out of disk
space, the data file was truncated to zero without any indication. It will also
help data integrity for the systems where ftruncate() is not available.
12. How can I reset the counter?
Answer: To reset the counter, find the file specified with
df= parameter, edit it with your favorite text editor. If you do not have access
to the datafile, your sysadmin has to do it for you.
13. How does this program handle remote
execution?
Answer: If you do not know, in most cases
any CGI program can be executed remotely without visiting the page with a
browser. For example, a CGI program x.cgi (say it returns an in-lined image) in
foo.com can be called from foobar.com as follows:
<img src="http://foo.com/cgi-bin/x.cgi">That is, someone somewhere on the Internet can refer to your counter and increase the hits and you will not have a clue. You will get the false impression of many people visiting your page.
So how does this program handle this? The counter program tries to get a environment variable called HTTP_REFERER for remote referrer. It is necessary to check this variable because when someone remotely refers to a CGI program on your machine, the variable REMOTE_ADDR will be the address of your machine. So checking REMOTE_ADDR will not work. Most of the modern browsers returns the env variable HTTP_REFERER. If the browser does not return the variable, counter will be served anyway. But you are not lost totally here. If you decided to ignore count for your host running httpd, the counter will be served but it will not be increased. So, I suggest ignore count for your own host. Gen-conf program is used for generating the configuration file. Due to the architecture of the web itself, there is not good solution of this problem, a determined evil hacker can always circumvent it.
14. What's the maximum number of hits the
counter can handle?
Answer: By default compile time
option, it can handle digits up to 80 character long which a very large number
(99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999).
It will not overflow in the life time of the Universe. However, this can be
easily increased by editing the MAX_DIGITS directive in count.h :). Now a pop
quiz, if a site gets one million hits/day, in which year will the counter
overflow?
15. I sent you so many mails, how come you never
respond?
Answer: I receive enormous number of mails.
Please understand that no way I can answer all of the mails I receive. If the
problem can be solved by reading the documentation, you won't hear from me,
otherwise I try my best to respond. But often I just have too much to do and
mails pile up. Instead of sending me mails, please subscribe
to the mailing list and send mail there.
16. How can I turn off "Reload Ignore"
feature?
Answer: This used to be a compile time
option, but it is a run time option from Count 2.5+. In the options section of
the configuration
file specify count_reload=Yes if you want to count reload. Also if
you do so, your counter users will have an option to ignore or count reload with
the parameter reload=T
or F.
17. Is there any way to compile the counter
without running the configuration scripts?
Answer:
It's simple in Count 2.5+. Just compile with defaults settings as described in
the section Steps to
compile and install of the counter main page.
18. Why do I have to add a line to the config
file every time I add a new virtual host?
Answer: It's
a security feature, to prevent users on other systems from using your host as a
"counter server". For information on automatically recognizing new virtual hosts
as they're added, see the answer to question
9. (Contributed by: Sean Reifschneider
jafo@gateway.tummy.com)
19. The counter does not seem to increment,
what's going on?
Answer: It's a feature in the new
release. It will only increment, if the visitor's IP and the one in the datafile
(last visitor) differs. It's there to handle people pressing the "Reload" button
continuously. If you do not like it, you can turn it off at compile time. Please
read the answer to Question
15.
20. How do I configure the counter on virtual
servers?
Answer: After running
Count-config normally, edit src/config.h and change
any references to directory paths in line 13,15, 16 and 17 to include the part
of the path your virtual server can see. For example, if the real path is
/user/mysite/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin, while the virtual server
might only access /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin.
(Contributed by: Jim Morrissey j.morrissey@videowaves.com.)
21. The counter seems to reset to zero
occasionally, what's going on?
Answer: If you are
using Count 2.5+, it should not happen. Only make sure that the disk partition
where the datafile is located is not a NFS mounted partition. If it is NFS
mounted, you might find counter process is hanging and consuming CPU and the
data files are getting clobbered. The reason for this is, file locking is not
reliable on all Unix over NFS.
22: While compiling, I get a message sh:
ar: not found, what's the problem?
Answer: You
see this message, because the location of the program ar is not in your PATH.
You need to find out the location of ar first. To do this at the shell prompt
type:
find / -name ar -printIf you are on a Solaris box, the output might look like:
/usr/ccs/bin/ar . Here /usr/ccs/bin is the directory
where ar is located. You need to add this location to your path. To do
this, if your shell is csh or its variant, edit the file .cshrc and
put a like like: set path = ( $path /usr/ccs/bin )Then source the file by typing:
source .cshrc PATH=$PATH:/usr/ccs/bin
export PATH
Then source the file by typing: . .bashrc 23. How to stop the browsers to cache the
counter image?
Answer: If you want the browser to
request the server for counter image each time you visit the page, use the
parameters cache=F&expires=0. If the browser respects HTTP
specification, it will not cache the image. You might want to do this if you're
using the counter as clock to make sure the time is shown correctly each time
someone visits the page. The downside to that is that the counter program gets
executed each time as browser does not cache the image. Another tick is to
change something in the parameter, like change ft or dd, so that the browser
will notice the tag is changed and ask the server for the image.
24. Is there any way to stop showing error messages to the
browsers?
Answer: Yes it's possible in Count 2.5+. It
is specified in the configuration
file with the keyword show_error_messages_to_browsers=Yes or No in the
options section.
25. How to make a counter hidden?
Answer: Use the parameter sh=F.
If you use the option sh=F, the counter program sends a 1 pixel by 1 pixel
transparent GIF image to the browser, which gives an illusion of hidden counter.
If you want to monitor the hits from another page, use the option incr=F and
df=the_data_file.
26. Can this program act as a text counter?
Answer: No. When you use the tag <img src= tag, the
browser expects an image. However you can use digits which look like text.
27. How does this program display time of
various time zones?
Answer: This program uses offset
from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to show time of various time zones. For example,
to display US Eastern Standard Time using offset from GMT, use the parameter
timezone like timezone=GMT-0500.
Note, you must use 4 digit offset.
28. How to display countdown?
Answer: If you want to display countdown to year 2000 (a
popular demand) just specify display=countdown&
dd=cd
Note: we specified dd=cd, as the default digit styles cd has all the
necessary image segments to display countdown. To display countdown to a
specific date (past or future) use the parameter cdt to
specify the target date. If you like to show the current date with the
countdown, use the parameter sfd. If
you want to change the color of the from date, use the parameter prgb
parameter. By default the countdown is calculated in reference to server time (
where the Count.cgi program is running). If you want display in reference to
other timezonze (e.g. GMT) use the timezone
parameter. Note: do not forget to use the parameters cache=F&expires
=0 to force the browser to load a fresh countdown image instead of loading it
from cache.
29. I get a error message "Counter datafile
"x/y/foo.dat must be created first!", how to create the file?
Answer: In Unix, at the shell prompt type:
touch /x/y/foo.datGive read/write permission (600) to the user running the web server.
echo "1" > X:\x\y\foo.datReplace X: with the appropriate drive letter. If you see forward and back slash combination in the error message, do not worry, it's OK.
My clock shows 100 as year, what's going on?
Answer: You are using an older version of the counter. It
was fixed in Count 2.5 long time ago. Please update to the latest version.
How can I tell what version of counter I'm
running?
Answer: From command line type:
$ Count.cgi -version Count version Count.cgi 2.5,(Apr-08-2001-1) By Muhammad A Muquit http://www.muquit.com/muquit/software/Count/Count.htmlor via web:
<img
src="/cgi-bin/Count.cgi?display=version">
Please make sure you're using the latest release of the counter.