AWStats: cannot access /var/log/apache2/access.log

Question

I installed awstats on my new Ubuntu Lucid server, but when cron tries to run it as user www-data, it complains that cannot access /var/log/apache2/access.log: Permission denied.

In /usr/share/doc/awstats/README.Debian there's this paragraph:

By default Apache stores (since version 1.3.22-1) logfiles with uid=root and gid=adm, so you need to either...

1) Change the rights of the logfiles in /etc/logrotate.d/apache so that www-data has at least read access.

2) As 1) but change to a specific user, and use the suEXEC feature of Apache to run as same user (and either change the right of /var/lib/awstats as well or use another directory). This is more complicated, but then the logs are not generally accessible to the server (which was probably the point of the Apache default).

3) Change awstats.pl to group adm (but beware that you are then taking the risk of allowing a CGI-script access to admin stuff on the machine!).

I'd go with 1, but what are the recommended permissions to grant?

Answer 1

If you go for point 1 and it says that www-data should have at least read permission then the recomended is grant only read.

You can alter the line (in logrotate file):

create 640 root adm

to

create 644 root adm

To give all users (www-data included) read permission.

You'll need to change permissions existent files in /var/log/apache2/ to match this setting

chmod a+r /var/log/apache2/* #or whatever your path is

Then all the files can be read by all users and all the files that logrotate create in the future will have the adecuate permissions

Answer 2

open the terminal and write

gksudo nautilus

and you will run file browser with root