CAN I SAFELY REMOVE A LINE IN HISTORY FILES (awstatsMMYYYY*.txt) ?
PROBLEM: After processing a log file I want to change my statistics without running AWStats update process but changing directly data in AWStats historical database files. SOLUTION: If you remove a lines starting with “BEGIN_” or “END_”, AWStats will find your file “corrupted” so you must not change those kind of lines. All lines that are not in any “section” (between a BEGIN_xxx and END_xxx line) should also not be removed. However you can change any line that is a “section record”, but you do this at your own risk. Your reported stats might have wrong values after that.
PROBLEM: After processing a log file I want to change my statistics without running AWStats update process but changing directly data in AWStats historical database files. SOLUTION: If you remove a lines starting with “BEGIN_” or “END_”, AWStats will find your file “corrupted” so you must not change those two kinds of lines. You can change, add or remove any line that is in any sections but if you do this, you must also update the MAP section (lines between BEGIN_MAP and END_MAP) because this section contains the offset in file of each other sections for direct I/O access. If history file is the last one, you can easily do that by removing completely the MAP section and run an update process. Like that AWStats will rewrite the history file and the MAP section will be rewritten (MAP section is not read by update process, only written). You do this at your own risk. The main risk is that some charts will report wrong values or be unavailable.
