normally installed awstats in ubuntu has a folder in /usr/share/doc/awstats This folder contains the awstats_updateall.pl, which can trigger all the update for all config file in the specific path. So we should not remove these folder from doc. you can bind the awstats by cron.d or logroate , see this example in /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 : prerotate /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/awstats_updateall.pl -configdir=/etc/awstats -awstatsprog=/usr/lib/cgi-bin/awstats.pl now endscript Sure, here is an good explaination for this topic: http://www.dalouche.com/wordpress/2006/11/22/howto-apache2-awstats-setup-on-debianubuntu-edgy-eft/ normally, we should do both of them, use cron.d and attach it with logrotate, cause logrotate will disable our awstats