Geo-counter Frequently Asked Questions

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FAQ #17 THE TOP FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION OF ALL TIME ... it puts ALL the rest of the FAQs to shame!!! FAQ-wannabes!!! N[early]F[requently]A[sked]Q[uestions]!!!   I tried to register for a counter - I completed the registration form correctly (no corrections were suggested), but the message returned was "no more counters can be issued"   Answer 1: Go to       http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/whoami   Rebuttal 1: But I am a U of A [staff, student] - I'm just trying to do this from my computer at [work, my friend's house, Texas, insert some foreign machine ISP here, etc, etc, ...]   Answer 2: What did http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/whoami return? If it did not return "ualberta", you can't use the counter program. Go to a machine that authenticates as "ualberta". [example: one of the LABS] OR, set up a proxy server to authenticate your desktop as a UofA client: http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/PROXY/   If you are using an on-campus machine that does not return "ualberta" (maybe only numbers), then it has been set up wrong! -- see your local area administrator.   Rebuttal 2: Geez, Geo. You should have made that more clear. But I want to STAY AT HOME and do this. Now what?   Answer 3: Go to http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/PROXY/, which will explain how you can set your browser so that you are identified as an on-campus machine.   Rebuttal 3: Oh.

FAQ #0

If I can't use your counter, whose can I use?

Here are good alternatives that you can install:

1. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/6742/
2. OR GO TO YAHOO's LIST

1. My homepage has recently relocated from one place to another. And I notice that the log is still showing my old homepage path in the "tail log" report.
2. And there are other URLs listed.
3. Has someone else "stolen" my counter?
4. I could not figure out how to change it to my new path without opening up an new log.

All URLs that call your counter have a chance at being listed here. (That includes ones from people who copied your page, and didn't make appropriate changes - maybe you should have left the <!-- See http://www.ualberta.ca/GEO/Counter.html for details --> in your file)

The file that keeps the URL references gets cleaned out with a probability of 1 chance in 200 hits. That is, it resets itself.

You can reset the URL list and several other things (including the count) if you are using a registered counter (then "inspect" the counter, then "Register the changes", which tells you that is will also reset the URL list).

As for "moving your counter around" to another site. Go ahead. Essentially you are "stealing" your own counter. Just do it, OK?! Once a counter exists, anyone can attach to it - including YOU, from somewhere else! The only control you have over it is the stuff in housekeeping, namely a "reset".

It is YOUR responsibility to email a "thief" and politely request that he remove "your" counter from his page. Only after he does not comply, should you give me a history of your email correspondence, and I'll blacklist him.

It would really be nice if instead of using a X-bitmap as the result, a text number would be returned. It seems to me that this would not be hard to do. I would appreciate some response on this one.

No, it's not hard - it's nearly impossible.

The "magic" in this counter program is that it updates itself in "real time". It does this by relying on your web browser going back over the network to find a graphic. -- in this case an XBM graphic.

Browsers don't go back over the network to find additional text, unless the web page is on a computer that has allowed for "server-side-includes", which compromises security. And if your server allows "server-side-includes", then there's no need to use my counter program -- you can see how that's done at http://melmac.corp.harris.com/access_counts.html

When the browser calls my server to ask for the graphic to be sent, I do a bunch of code instead, and then only when the code is finished, do I sent back what the browser is expecting - an XBM graphic. This is possible since unix makes no differentiation between a file (such as a graphic) and a program. That's how I can handle this non-obtrusive "trojan horse".

More on this subject...

Hey, Geo! You may live in Edmonton, which is MDT, but I don't. How can we fix this?

I'm going to put a "quick fix" to report at the top of each log that this is "Edmonton Time (Mountain Daylight Time)". It would be too cpu-intensive for me to retro-actively change the times in the logs.

Eventually, I'll add an attribute for "time zone offset" into the Registration program.

I can see in the log files the machine ip address, but not the actual name of the user. Isn't that possible?

The only information I can log is what comes back from the environment variables passed to me.

You can see your environment by trying http://www.ualberta.ca/WebSupport/DumpEnvironment.html

You will notice that there's no way to show the User's name.

Actually, for some desktop unix users, it is very possible for me to trap the name of the user via other techniques, but it is not universal, and certainly not possible for the majority of browsers, which are on Macs or Windows machines. When Browsers start telling the Web servers via the Environment variables, I'll report the user name.

Geez, Geo. I had a good counter, and then registered. But there doesn't seem to be a way to RESET it, like you promised.

Registering your name does not give you ability to control non-registered counters.

That is, the only counters that you can "control" (resets, etc) are the ones you build using the "add a new counter" button from within the housekeeping program.

Your counter is a generic counter that was built WITHOUT the aid of the housekeeping program.

What part of the following 16 words direct from Notes-Restrictions needs to be re-worded to make it more clear:

     No new counters will be registered during the 
     UofA's prime time.  (That's 8am-5pm,  Edmonton time.)

or the GIF that is sent when you try!!

And if you're getting the XBM, then you're doing OTHER things wrong, too, like not suffixing your counter with ".gif".

I'm getting very tired of having people ask this. If they can't interpret this, then it's likely they can't read other things (besides a clock), too. I surely don't have time to babysit these type of people, and I'm going to consider instantaneously blacklisting any site that emails me asking me what time it is.

This would be because of potentially one of the following:
1. someone at your site misused the service
   • didn't take counter off when I asked him to
   • generated too much traffic
   • stole other people's counters
2. someone at your site asked way too many stupid questions, or flamed, lectured, or whined about the lack of support, or terseness of my email responses, elevating my support time for a project that was only supposed to be "spare time" to HUGE
3. the sysadmin at your site already HAS a counter program for their clients

I haven't been keeping exact logs of why sites have been blacklisted, because I originally didn't expect that I would be blacklisting that many sites. I was wrong - there are lots. And because of that, I can't remember exactly why one particular site has been put on the list. That also means there's NO WAY I'll re-release a site.

Sorry about that.

A 9: Because of two things:

1. You didn't read the notes, or
2. You didn't count up to 10.

A 10: NO.

The "code" to keep track of "last N users" is trivial. It's just a puny little environment variable. Feel free to add it to any Perl counter program you want:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Add the following lines anywhere to
# any perl counting script, and you too can
# track "last N users".  All you'll have to 
# do is use a little imagination on how to
# keep the log files organized, and how to issue
# a system("tail -n/tmp/somelogfile") command
# sometime later.
#
#
open(SOMELOG,">>/tmp/somelogfile");	# Append to end
					#  of existing log file
 print SOMELOG "$ENV{'REMOTE_HOST'} ".
		"     $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'}\n";
close(SOMELOG);
#
exit;

If you would rather I add it to someone's code - fine. Send it to me. (As well as a cheque for $150/hr.)

Or, Here -- write your own from scratch.

... Also, why isn't the password blanked out?

A 11:

Registration was invented so that you can reset your counter. Without a password, anyone might decide to reset your counter. Password ensures authorization.

Pick a password, any password. It has nothing to do with any log-in of yours (nor should it).

If you don't want to build a password, you don't have to use the registration program.

Although it is trivial to blank out a password on a form, I thought leaving it visible would cut down the "duh, I forgot my password" email. It will also encourage people to NOT pick the password to match their standard machine or log-in passwords, which I'd rather not travel across the internet world.

As mentioned above, the "password" is an extra level of authentication to stop other internet users from stealing your counters - I doubt if any of THEM will be looking over your shoulder as you type.

A 12:

To quote Nike, Just do it.


Quote from REVISIONS, Sep 25:

• Made a modification to the Registration program that lets you "claim"/"inherit" a non-registered counter. It should preserve the previous counts, create date, logs, etc.
That means, register, go through housekeeping, click "add a new counter", and where I give you the "suggestion" for the counter name, type in your old counter name.

A 13:

This is a problem with a rotary/dynamic address.

I haven't built a "wildcard" structure into the &ignore feature yet. I suppose (via housekeeping) you could enumerate ALL possibilities -- in fact, some people have done this.

However, here's the dilemma... By ignoring a range of addresses that several clients other than yourself may be using, you ignore *their* hits, as *well* as your own.

I'll bet that you have an intuitive idea of how many times you have accessed your own page. I'd also submit that you'd like an idea of how many on-campus (via this dynamic addressing scheme) accesses have been made.

Bottom line, you can kludge an &ignore to everyone, but do some soul-searching about the value of the results if you do.

A 14:

You have run into a problem I don't know how to solve, so I call it a "feature" - not a bug.

By allowing you to arbitrarily set the number of accesses, I had two choices - change the "create date" to this value, or leave the "create date" as its true original.

The math for references per day is:

      total count /  number of days since create date.

If I keep the create date as its original, then people with busy counters can circumvent my upper limit (500 rpd) by making the total count arbitrarily low.

If I move the create date every time you make a change to the offset, then I get people setting their number to huge (like you), making it to the "top 30 list", and breaking past the 500 rpd (as you have). Note: Since UofA counters are exempt (ie, no upper limit), this feature WORKS!! --- That's why it even exists.

Set the number back to zero, and let it count up naturally. I'm working on a new scheme, based on watching the "daily counts", rather than a nightly calculation of "references per day".

A 15:

You may be registered USER, but your counter(s) might not be registered. That is, given that you don't need to "register" to get a counter going, you may think you're using a registed counter, when you're NOT -- if you never pressed the add a new counter button from the housekeeping page, you do not have a registered counter!

It's likely you have never been able to do housekeeping on your counter. (resets, re-sync, higher limits, etc)

Unfortunately, because I'm not letting any more off-campus people build new counters, registering your name will do nothing for you.

Eventually, I hope to have a "claim" function added, which will let users turn un-registered counters into registered ones, but I don't have it yet, and probably won't for a while.

A 16:

I'll bet bucketloads of money that you were using Netscape's web editor, or Microsoft's Frontpage editor to make changes to your page. After all, these companies know best -- and seemlessly (and without warning) modifying someone else's code under the guise of "optimization" is their right as part of the elite internet Mafia.

Those (and several other packages) have a really nasty habit of wrecking <IMG SRC= tags when you pull the page back off of a server to make that baby, tiny, insignificant wording change.

The result is that your <IMG SRC= call to Geo-counter was probably changed from:

     <IMG SRC="http://www.ualberta.ca/htbin/Geo-counter.gif?yoursite.yourfile.gif">

to something resembling:

    <IMG SRC="Geo-counter.gif">

... the result is either a statically attached number that Netscape pulled down for you, or a broken icon.

... and you didn't even know it. Because you were working on a title change three screens back, and would NEVER have assumed that your trustworthy program would "optimize" your code for you.

See also: This description from the main Geo-counter page.