Cron settings for AWstats

does it depend on website traffic?

[caran1]

I have a number of websites on a single server.Currently I have set the cron settings for AWStats for the smaller websites to update once a day and for larger websites, to update more frequently. if cron settings update once a day for larger websites , do I loose any data?
Also by updating frequently, does it load the server?
I have allowed automatic update from browser, so are the cron settings relevant?
Any help will be appreciated

[jetboy]

No. You won't lose any data just by changing your update frequency. Where you may lose data is when you're rotating log files. Ideally, you'd run AWStats just before your logs are rotated.

What you're trying to avoid is too many concurrent processes on the server. On a large site, if you ran AWStats once a month, the processing may take hours. Too many of these kind of updates running is the kind of thing that'll impact your server performance.

Running the updates more frequently cuts down the time each one will take, thus cuts down the risk of long periods of drain on the server.

However, running the updates too frequently will create its own (smaller) overhead, also to be avoided.

If you set every site to update once a day, with times for each spaced throughout the day, you should be fine. Try to space the larger sites evenly around the day, so if there is an overlap, it's only between a large site and a small site.

I'd still tend to run a cron, even if AWStats is set to update from the browser. It gives more control to the server admin, and minimises the chance of users triggering long updates at inopportune times.