Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/Geo/IPfree.pm line 81.
Create/Update database for config "/home/USERNAME/tmp/awstats/awstats.DOMAIN.com.conf" by AWStats version 6.9 (build 1.925)

Eth0.us has a fix – which is to downgrade to the older version. I decided I would try something new. Besides adding the by city information, the country database is much more up to date and new updates are available monthly from Maxmind as well as an API to use the databases. You can find all kinds of methods to make use of these from their API section.

Installing Maxmind GeoIPCountry & GeoIPCity on your Cpanel server:
1. Install the GeoIP C API (comes with the country database)
2. Install the Geo::IP Perl module (Pureperl if you cannot do step 1)
3. Download the binary format Maxmind City lite database. gunzip the .dat file and copy to /usr/local/share/GeoIP/, which is where the Country database will be if you performed step 1.

For Cpanel users, you must run this command: cp /usr/local/cpanel/src/3rdparty/gpl/awstats-6.9/wwwroot/cgi-bin/plugins/geoip_city_maxmind.pm /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/plugins/geoip_city_maxmind.pm This will make the module available for use by Awstats.
For new accounts an Awstats configuration file is generated. To add Country and now City statistics in all new sites, edit /usr/local/cpanel/etc/awstats.conf. I’m not sure if cpup will overwrite this file, but it is possible.

You can comment out LoadPlugin="geoipfree"< so the end of the file looks like this:

#LoadPlugin="geoipfree"
LoadPlugin="geoip GEOIP_STANDARD /usr/local/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat"
LoadPlugin="geoip_city_maxmind GEOIP_STANDARD /usr/local/share/GeoIP/GeoLiteCity.dat"

In order to add this to any exsting sites with Awstats, you’ll need to edit the /homedir/username/tmp/awstats.domain.com.conf file and change the end. Make sure there that you comment out the old LoadPlugin lines.

Trying it out
If you have in the Web Host Manager (WHM) : Tweak Settings the check box to allow users to update their Awstats, you can try this out. Run tail /usr/local/cpanel/logs/stats_log and watch for any errors from your attempted update. That is if they don’t pop out at your screen.

While I’m at it, I want to say kudos to Maxmind for releasing another free product (though read the licensee) and eth0.us because it has been a very helpful blog in the past.

I will post in this or a related blog any helpful info so that someday it may help another person. For now I need to see how tuning certain parameters changes performance over about a week of time.

Lastly, I was able to automate my sitemaps thanks to a PHP script that I found. Google does not like it when there are more than 50,000 links in a sitemap, and my site has almost 200,000.

In the background, I’ve also recompiled Apache, PHP, all of its modules, and Cpanel’s PHP so everyone can enjoy faster speed on the server. I found some disk i/o enhancements that will also help.

Wow! Its just amazing how little memory Lighttpd uses to serve out thousands of tiny .gif files. Apache would generate a memory intensive process for every request. I’ll be able to find creative uses for this in the future.

I’ve updated us to the SVN Gallery 2 that has the Gallery Core at 2.3. It seems really fast. Firestats slows down the gallery, and I wish that it would use PostgreSQL as an option so that the database writes, even in innodb, don’t slow it down so much. I get great stats from Firestats for both Wordpress and Gallery 2, however its speed degradation is pretty enormous. I gave up trying mod_mem_cache once I realized that I could never speed it up to the degree that it runs without Firestats. One idea is to run a separate MySQL server, but this seems inelegant. I may just end up trying it out, or putting a Firestats database on a VPN.

I still would like to finish sorting and updating all of the pictures. I can add so many recent pictures that Gordon and Cubbie have taken, but work consumes my life at the moment.

I wanted to help out the great site, The Free Sound Project, so I set up Squid proxy on our server. It is pretty amazing that we are now serving out twice as many bits of traffic, yet it has a negligible effect on our server load and other resources!

From their site:

The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focuses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!

What I’ve gained is much experience using Squid, which gives me ideas on how to use it to get much more performance out of webservers in general. What I find cool about this is that the use of the http://freesound.cyborgcow.net proxy is invisible to you, when you are browsing the site. When you preview or download a sound, it actually grabs it from one of several mirrors.

I am always looking for ways to contribute to Open Source or Creative Commons projects. The Creative Commons liscense comes in several flavors, but a good example is the share and share alike license that Nine Inch Nails released their Ghosts EPs. That means you can legally download those songs for free! On top of that, you can remix the songs and release them. This spurs innovation.

By assisting a large collection of free, Creative Commons licensed audio files and samples, I hope to assist artists all over the world in creating new and amazing projects!

I am also going to get to post how-to guide for using your album in really fun ways- such as having random desktops on your computer, embedding into your Livejournal or Myspace, and how to get random pictures on your Facebook profile.

I am currently working on four websites getting them up and running, including my own, but things are going to get very fun! I have a lot to share that has been in the dreaming stage for far too long.

I am going to get together a Video gallery, which will be spearheaded by a documentary by M-Pire’s Matt Lipinski. [M-Pire Gallery]