Michael Papet

This following should take the reader through a complete awstats setup from start to finish.  The reader should be cognizant of the possible impacts of some of the commands casually mentioned below.  This was done on Debian’s Lenny distro with apache2.  The reader should be very familiar with setting up an Apache2 instance.

1. Apt-get awstats.
2. Configure Apache2:  Use   /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/apache.conf  as your template for whatever you end up with in /etc/apache2/sites-available/awstats.  Apache configs are subject to personal preferences too much to be more specific than this.
3. Link /etc/apache2/sites-available/awstats to /etc/apache2/sites/enabled/awstats. ‘ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/awstats /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/awstats’
4. Restart apache2 ‘/etc/init.d/apache2 restart’

IIS Log Set Up Minutae

Before you can make awstats useful, your logs from your IIS instance have to meet some minimum requirements.  I don’t remember the IIS logging defaults, but given Microsoft’s hostility to Free software, it’s likely a plain-vanilla IIS log will not work with awstats.

What’s especially miserable about IIS is setting the ‘host header value’ on Win2003.  Somehow this value ended up being null for me and any attempts to change it end up with a 404 error.  I have a hard time maintaining the value of Microsoft products with nasty bugs like this….

The following fields should be used in the log: Client IP Address, Service Name, URI Stem, URI Query, Protocol Status, Bytes Sent, User Agent, Referer.  Of those, Bytes Sent is required for awstats to work!!! There are other fields that might be useful in special situations like %logname, but that’s for you to poke through the default awstats.conf file and figure out based on your needs.

Now that your web server is ready, set up awstats for IIS logs.  My logs come from a Windows 2003 machine.

Awstats.conf  Set Up

1. Check a log.  You need to extract the hostname (s-sitename) from the log.  You will need this name and it will be referred to as $s-sitename from now on.
2. Copy an awstats.conf file to awstats.$s-sitename.conf where $s-sitename.
3. Open the newly copied awstats.$s-sitename.conf file.
4. Set the path of where the log files reside.
5. Make your log string.  It will probably be a custom incantation.
6. Set LogFile.  If your IIS logs are rotated, then you *might* be able to use logresolvemerge.pl to feed awstats logs.  logresolvemerge.pl does the work of feeding logs to awstats in the required time-sensitive manner.  Otherwise, you may need to work out feeding awstats logs oldest data first.
7. Change the SiteDomain value to whatever $s-sitename is.
8. Add HostAliases as needed.
9. Save the file and exit.
10. Change directory to your web root for your awstats page.
11. Run “/usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -config=$s-sitename  -showcorrupted” Where $s-sitename is whatever your hostname may be in the log file.  This incantation will tell you if there are problems with the logs while processing .  IIS log incantations are fiddley, so there will probably be several tries before your log string (step 5) is okay and awstats works as expected.
12. Run “/usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl  -config=$s-sitename  -output > $your/path/to/web/root/index.html”  Where $your/path/to/web/root is the same as your apache config web root.  You’ll have basic information now. You should not need the -static option so frequently mentioned elsewhere if your Apache2 config is set up like the example given.  Optionally, you can set LogFile=”/some/custom/path” to feed awstats in a customized manner.

For the rest of the reports, I use the awstats_updateall.pl script located in /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples.  I recall it needs a copy of awstats.pl in the same directory for it to work.

Essential documentation for awstats is at their Sourceforge site.

Leave questions as comments.

A big thank you to Verizon for doing nothing on a DS1 circuit that has been variously up and down for 4 14 days.  That’s right, four fourteen whole days.  Open the ticket, Verizon engineer finds an unspecified problem, closes ticket.  14 days in a row.  Escalation?  Worthless.  Chronic issue?  Equally worthless.

Another reason why the telco’s government-granted Monopoly deserves to be modified to allow for more competition.

Picking up the phone does not qualify as service.

I made some pretty wild accusations about highly-ranked Americans in the UCI cyclocross points battle here.  It turns out instead of actually getting lapped, they almost got lapped.

What happened when a bunch of American pros showed up for Kalmthout?

17. Jonathan Page (USA), at 01:45  Planet Bike

38. James Driscoll (USA), Rock Racing at 04:34  ( ~3 minutes back on Jonathan)

50. Troy Wells (USA), at 05:31  (~4 minutes back on Jonathan)

Top-ranked Americans (excluding Mr. Page) are in the lower half of the field and yet were ranked in the 20-something’s on UCI points.  If this was a situation where Driscoll and Wells would swing into a World Cup and finish in the 20-somethings, then they would have earned their mid-20’s points.  But it’s not.  Nowhere near it.  There are no excuses either.  Belgian Hardman Sven Nys passed plenty (20?) of people AND dropped a chain on the same course on his way to a win.

I hope the UCI will adjust their scoring next year because neither one of those Americans are justified in keeping their rankings anywhere near the mid-twenties.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Page has legitimately earned his position.  Go Jonathan!

Full results here.

With the new hotness being cyclocross these days, it might be helpful for some to get some advice on buying your first ‘cross bike.

First, some rules.

1. The content is targeted at road or mountain bike riders who are already riding regularly.  Or, someone interested in upgrading their road bike and considering a cyclocross bike.
2. If you want a to read about the interaction of cyclocross geometry on your road postion or some other equally dense fiction then go elsewhere.
3. I’m talking complete bikes available at your Local Bike Shop coming in around USD $3,000 or less.  No Empella/Ridley mentions because these are very well outside the norm in many ways.
4. I’m talking specifically about cyclocross bikes with drop bars.  I’m very glad there are flat bar multi-purpose bikes because it generally means more bike riders, but I’m not discussing these.

What’s different about a cyclocross bike versus a road bike?  They have room for fatter tires, and more powerful cantilever brakes.  You sit higher on a ‘cross bike because the bottom bracket is much higher than the equivalent road bike.  Many accommodate fenders so one can ride in more varied weather without getting soaked by the tire spray.  The ability to ride much more varied terrain is a big plus.

What’s the same about a cyclocross bike?  For road riders, the geometry is very similar to the average road bike.  You can very easily race a cyclocross bike in road events like time trials and criteriums.  There is a  slight weight and aerodynamic penalty, but that is not actually important in a Category 4/5 field.

Measure your current bike:

If your bike has a perfectly horizontal top tube, then measure the top tube from center-of-the seat-tube to center-of-the-head-tube.  Mark the spot you measured on your seat tube.

If your bike has a sloping top tube, then measure from the center-of-the-head-tube to the center-of-the-seat-tube keeping your tape measure flat. mark the spot you measured to on your seat tube.

Measure from the center of the bottom bracket to the spot you marked on the seat tube.

Top Tube Spec.

For road riders, seek a ‘cross bike with a top tube length within 0 to -1 cm.  You want to be more upright on a cross bike than a road bike, so a little shorter top tube is a benefit.  Cross-country mountain bike riders will want to have a similar top tube length, gravity-riders will be much more stretched out.

Seat Tube Spec

The seat tube length needs some special consideration because the bottom bracket is much higher on a ‘cross bike.  I recommend a seat tube specification  ~1-2 cm shorter.

Mountain Bike Riders

Translating your seat tube length into a ‘cross bike is a bit more difficult because of the variations in mountain geometry.  Subtracting 2cm from the length of the seat tube dimensions from above works for me on my cross-country oriented full-suspension bike.

Results

The end result should be a seat post that sticks out a 1-2 cm more than a traditional horizontal-top-tube road bike.  Remember, the bottom bracket is much higher than a road bike.  The effective standover height will resemble a road bike and the brand’s frame size will generally come in -2 cm smaller than a traditional horizontal-top-tube road bike.  In pictures, it should look something like this .

I know there are other setups that end up looking like Todd Wells’ or Ryan Trebon’s, super-tall seatpost but I think those are outside cases specifically crafted for those racers and won’t translate very well when buying a retail bike.

Other details

Don’t get hung up on minor differences between bikes.  Riding cyclocross is still a test to see how many Watts you can generate with bike handling technique a contributing factor. Cable routing, frame material or other details just don’t matter that much.

Some objective proof to discourage splitting hairs on equipment, Dan Timmerman (Richard Sachs) got a top-10 at nationals this year (2009) on an ‘old-fashioned’ steel ‘cross bike and  David Frattini had some excellent results on a practically stock Fuji cyclocross bike.

Ride more!

The 12/8/09 UCI Cyclocross rankings are the hot new reality distortion field.

Check out some of these rankings.

14. Jonathan PAGE:  this is accurate.  He earned this ranking in Europe against the best in the World.

19. Sven VANTHOURENHOUT: again, very accurate.

21. Timothy JOHNSON:  Hasn’t raced Europe once this season.

22 and 23.  More Americans that haven’t raced Europe once this season.

When/if positions 21-23 get to go to World’s they will be lucky to stay on the lead lap.  Many guys ranked way below these three will finish on the lead lap!

On the Women’s side:

1. Katherine COMPTON: totally earned her #1 in the European races.

Positions around 20 and below have Americans that have won much slower domestic races mixed in with European UCI World Cup racers.

In both gender groups, those Americans don’t stand a chance of collecting as many points if they raced in Europe.  Is it ‘wrong?’  Not really because it’s impossible to set up a points system while looking into the future and have it accurately reflect a reality that has not yet happened.

People like Ms. Vardaros are wrongfully penalized for racing with the best and it doesn’t force American fields to get faster.  Hopefully, next year the UCI will adjust their metrics.  World Cup racers for the most part should be roughly on top of all of the domestic-only racers.

I know how many UCI administrators read my blog, (0) so have a few meetings on this one, okay?

VeloNews is a generally great publication with excellent editorial control, but then they publish garbage like this. In this case, there’s lots of legitimate sounding terms in the article, yet it’s nonsense.  Sophmore engineer is a derogatory term to describe the “if a little is good then more is better!” mindset.

First, it’s true tubulars are better for the dedicated cyclocross racer.  Tubulars provide much lower rotational weight and reliability is improved in some conditions.   You can build lighter tubular wheels for much less money than clinchers too.  But damn they are a whole lotta work.

The article at VeloNews from a writer that claims the physics of riding clinchers are so different from tubulars that the laws of physics are altered.  To which he would reply, “Of course not!  ….”  and then alter his premise to be more specific and conveniently ignore the original ridiculous statement.

1. Somehow, tubulars offer ‘more traction’ in a way that requires clinchers to be knobbied.

This is a Sarah Palin argument.  It is purposely vague as to always be true.     But I’m just being a ‘big bummer’ by you know, collecting boring observable facts about these things.

2. Somehow a deep tread pattern is more important on a clincher.

The writer’s thinking is because one runs clinchers harder than sewups, somehow a deep tread becomes more important.  But there’s a bunch of clincher mountain bike tires/racers/history that says otherwise.  But that’s boring history.  It doesn’t promote the author’s position at all, so it isn’t relevant.

3. ‘If there’s no tread, generally, there’s not much traction.’

So, where does that leave most cross tubulars?  If we’re using the physical world as the reference point this statement is nonsense.  Last time I rode a bike, I was doing it in the physical world, not some logical construct that satisfies this statement.

The physics of bicycling suggests the clincher treads should be just like high-end not-mud tubulars and less like dirt motorcycle tires.  Clinchers are not special in this regard.

Please, don’t fall for his sophmore engineering logic.

Train better, race faster.

The legitimate option for aged pro bikes is the White Brothers Magic fork.  Yeah, it’s worth every penny of the $749 to resurect an old Ibis Xtra Mojo hardtail.

God bless em’ for supporting the old pro bike riders.

I had a guy come up to me on my modded  Schwinn Sweet Spot full suspension and say something to the effect, “I’ve never seen a bike like that…. “  and “I didn’t know Schwinn built good mountain bikes…”

Homegrown’s are still light weight with exceptional handling.  I’m still quite satisfied with the full-suspension.  It’s unfortunate the Schwinn brand was in decline at that time because the Homegrown was a legitimately great line of bikes.

FYI:  the Castellano patented single-pivot is still in production as a 29er.

Knobbies.  Knobbies everywhere!

Do you want every last watt of power you put out to translate into speed on the cyclocross bike?  Then in most cases, stay away from full knobby tires.

Full knobbies aren’t particularly beneficial in most riding conditions.  The human body doesn’t put out so much power that a smoother tire could possibly break traction.  Is it possible to break traction?  Sure, but that’s the result of a very inefficient riding style.  What about the front wheel slipping out?  Tire engineers would argue, and I agree, that there isn’t enough contact area for most tall side knob designs.  They may give you mental reassurance, but the physics just don’t work.

The best example of what should be your next set of budget tires is the Michelin Jet.  A little cheaper tire is the Kenda Kwik.  Either tire in a 30c will give you excellent handling too.

Now that I’ve driven away the fashionable cyclocross crowd with heretical views on knobbies, the one of you that’s gotten this far should consider why 34c’s aren’t, on average, a good choice.

My problem with 34c’s is they are very wiggly when cornering where it counts the most, high speeds.   What you gain in more shock absorption in slower sections is a big net-loss if you are gapped in high-speed corners.   Accelerating from 20 km/h to 24 km/h is *much* harder than from 16 km/h to 20 km/h.  Running 30c’s keeps your speeds higher because you can corner faster.

Are there single-race conditions where 34c tires will make a meaningful difference?  Yes. If a 34c gives you the luxury of mot0r-boating through sandy sections while others run, then that’s a big-win.  Another course where 34c’s work is long, flat*very* choppy sections.   In both these examples, running a knobby in mostly dry conditions will only slow you down.

In muddy conditions, running a skinnier tire with an open tread, (not a knobby) works better.  The uncommon wisdom in this case is the bike sinks to the firmest ground.  An open tread discourages mud from collecting.  Knobbies will encourage some mud collecting because of all of the clever ridges on which the mud sticks.

Knobs are out for cyclocross.  Right?  Skinnier tires good.  Fat tires bad.