How to build Webalizer with all its bells and whistles*

by Andrés Cabezas (www.domador.net)  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

My favorite webhosting statistics package is Webalizer. Several official updates to the program have been published in the last few months, following several years of silence (as far as releases were concerned.) I wanted to use the latest version in my DreamHost account, but could only find instructions for installing the binaries for an older version. After some trial and error, I managed to compile the latest version. In order to enable all of Webalizer’s features, I had to download and build two other packages. My shared server on DreamHost already had all the other dependencies. (If you are following these instructions on another web hosting provider, you may need to download additional packages, in addition to the ones mentioned here.)

The following steps would create a webalizer directory under your shell account’s home directory. The webalizer/sources subdirectory will house the code for Webalizer’s dependencies (at least the code for programs which aren’t already installed on the server. If you’re using a different hosting provider, you may need to download more packages in addition to the ones mentioned here.) The webalizer/lib will contain the compiled libraries which webalizer will require at runtime. The webalizer binary and webazolver link will be stored in the webalizer directory.

For these instructions, make sure to replace USERNAME with the username corresponding to your own shell account.

A script that performs these commands is also available.  You can obtain it at the following web page: http://www.domador.net/build-webalizer-script/

Steps:

1. Create the webalizer directory.
   

   mkdir /home/USERNAME/webalizer/
   

2. Make the directory where the required library files will be stored.
   

   mkdir /home/USERNAME/webalizer/lib
   

3. Make a directory to store the source code for the libraries you will use.
   

   mkdir /home/USERNAME/webalizer/sources
   

4. Download and build the bzip2 library (http://www.bzip.org/, http://www.bzip.org/downloads.html)
   

   cd /home/USERNAME/webalizer/sources
   wget http://www.bzip.org/1.0.5/bzip2-1.0.5.tar.gz
   tar xvfz bzip2-1.0.5.tar.gz
   cd bzip2-1.0.5/
   make
   make install PREFIX=/home/USERNAME/webalizer
   

5. Download anb build the matching version of the Berkeley DB library.
   

   cd /home/USERNAME/webalizer/sources
   wget http://download.oracle.com/berkeley-db/db-4.4.20.tar.gz
   tar xvfz db-4.4.20.tar.gz
   cd db-4.4.20/build_unix/
   ../dist/configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/webalizer
   make
   make install
   

6. Download and build Webalizer (http://www.webalizer.org/, http://www.webalizer.org/download.html)
   

   cd /home/USERNAME/webalizer/sources
   wget ftp://ftp.mrunix.net/pub/webalizer/webalizer-2.21-02-src.tgz
   tar xvfz webalizer-2.21-02-src.tgz
   cd webalizer-2.21-02/
   ./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/webalizer --with-language=english --enable-dns --enable-bz2 --enable-geoip --with-bz2lib=/home/USERNAME/webalizer/lib --with-bz2=/home/USERNAME/webalizer/include
   make
   make install
   

7. Install the Webalizer binaries in the webalizer folder
   

   cd /home/USERNAME/webalizer
   cp bin/webalizer .
   ln -s webalizer webazolver
   

8. Include the following lines at the top of any scripts which run Webalizer.
   

   LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/USERNAME/webalizer/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   

Step 8 is needed in order for Webalizer to find all the libraries it needs to run. An alternative is to compile Webalizer statically by adding the --enable-static parameter to the configure script. Doing this eliminates the need for step 8. However, the webalizer binary grows in size from 320 kilobytes to 1.9 megabytes. According to the compiler messages, there could be other caveats, which aren’t covered in these instructions.

• (6b. Alternative) Download and build Webalizer statically (http://www.webalizer.org/, http://www.webalizer.org/download.html)
  

• cd /home/USERNAME/webalizer/sources
  wget ftp://ftp.mrunix.net/pub/webalizer/webalizer-2.21-02-src.tgz
  tar xvfz webalizer-2.21-02-src.tgz
  cd webalizer-2.21-02/
  ./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/webalizer --with-language=english --enable-dns --enable-bz2 --enable-geoip --enable-static --with-bz2lib=/home/USERNAME/webalizer/lib --with-bz2=/home/USERNAME/webalizer/include --with-geodb=/usr/share/GeoIP/
  make
  make install
  

Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Future releases of Webalizer may require updates to the libraries compiled for use with Webalizer.

* These instructions are not guaranteed to enable ringing or whistling support in Webalizer.

Copyright 2009 Andres Cabezas.  Some rights reserved.

How to compile Webalizer with all its bells and whistles by Andres Cabezas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.