On Debian, when you install AWSTATS, it automatically adds a crontab to update the data every 10 minutes. If you’ve not configured your awstats config files correctly, every time the cronjob runs it will generate an error in /var/mail

In order to solve this, or have AWSTATS update on your own schedule simply edit the crontab file it installs to /etc/cron.d/awstats

You should find this line in the file:

*/10 * * * * www-data [ -x /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh ] && /usr/share/awstats/tools/update.sh


I commented it out with a “#”, incase I wanted to use it later. Alternatively you can delete the file or change the crontab to update whenever you want it to operate.