Hit List is specifically designed to work with your Lotus
Domino installation in a number of ways.
Configuring Domino
Your Domino server must be logging web activity
to a standard ASCII text log file rather than a Notes
database (.nsf) format. See your Domino documentation
for details.
Domino normally creates three distinct log files
(by default, Access, Referer_log and Agent_log) that
are of interest to Hit List. The Domlog, cgi-error_log
and error_log (also typically created by Domino) are
not of interest to Hit List and thus should be ignored.
You will need to make sure all three (access, agent
and referer) logs are in the same directory so that
Hit List can get them to combine and load their information
into its database. Domino 4.6 users may be able to
modify their settings to have Domino itself simply
produce one "combined" log that contains all the access,
agent and referer data in one log (thus Hit List won't
have to), but again, consult your Domino documentation
for the instructions in this regard.
To set up Hit List for Domino, go to the Options/Logfile
tab. Use the Browse button or otherwise enter the
name of the Domino "Access" log. Hit List will automatically
find and combine it with the appropriate referer_log
and agent_log (provided they are in the same directory
as the Access log, as discussed above). You can use
wildcards here to get more than one "set" of logs,
ie entering c:\logs\access.* will cause Hit List to
identify all your access logs and match each of them
with their corresponding referrer and agent logs.
Logfile "naming convention". As Domino log naming
conventions can vary all over the map, Hit List requires
you to use the "most common" naming convention for
your logs, which looks like:
(for relevant Domino logs dated August 13, 1998).
The former style was the most common naming convention
seen in Domino 4.5, while the latter in Domino 4.6.
Again, you must "tell" Domino to name your logs this
way in its configuration, so consult your Domino documentation
if you need further details.
Virtual Servers and Domino
IP-based Virtual Servers and Domino
As Lotus Domino uses the NCSA standard format for
its logfiles (similar to Apache and Netscape webservers),
there is a reserved field for the server's IP but
to the best of our knowledge (ask Lotus for more details)
there is no way to "tell" Domino to log this information
when outputting the logs in text format.
The second field, here seen with a dash for a placeholder,
is the field for the server's IP in NCSA format. Thus
if the server or virtual server had an IP of 123.123.123.123,
and Domino could log this information, you'd see the
following:
Again, you'll want to check with Lotus, but to our
knowledge, neither Domino 4.5 or 4.6 can log this
information into the text logs.
Logfile generation
Another difficulty is that in the case of Apache
or Netscape, even though they typically can't log this
information into the logs either, they WILL produce
actual separate logfiles in different directories per
virtual server. So in the above example, if we had two
virtual servers of IP 123.123.123.123 and 234.234.234.234
respectively, and we were using Apache or Netscape,
the logs for the first virtual server would be in one
directory, and the logs for the second virtual server
would be in another, even though they would likely NOT
have the server's IP put into the logs. But with the
logs in an actual separate directory, it is easy then
to load them into separate Hit List databases, or alternatively
run some sort of Perl script against the logs to "insert"
the IP into the appropriate field in the appropriate
log(s).
Revisions 4.5-4.6 Domino, unfortunately, cannot separate
access/agent/referer logs by virtual server in this
manner either. However, we have heard from a few users
that this is to be changed in Domino v5, expected
in early '99. So again, you will want to inquire with
Lotus for more details.
Does this mean I cannot use Virtual Servers with
Domino?
No. However, it does mean that you'll need to have
your virtual servers organized by user-directory so
the URLs will reflect one directory where all the
content is contained per virtual server (which may
not be possible to set up/revamp on your existing
website).
Example:
I have a "kevin" virtual server, which serves up
content like kevin.gif, kevin.htm, etc. Ideally, all
that content would be in a "/kevin/" directory and
the URLs would look something like:
Then you would fill in the settings in the Hit List
Virtual Server Manager (as you know, BEFORE you build
the database) as a Virtual Server Name of "Kevin",
likely leave the IP field blank and then the URL Root
would be /kevin/.
Host Header-based virtual servers
We have yet to encounter any Domino users who have
their Virtual Servers organized according to Host Header.
In the NCSA logfile format spec there is not a standard
field to log the host header information, and to our
knowledge and experience only Apache can do so (but
NOT in standard format, so it will still cause problems).
So if you ARE using Virtual Servers according to Host
Header, contact Marketwave Technical Support (support@issel.co.uk)
in addition to Lotus to discuss the situation further.
