Chucks Blog

ab (apache bench) is a command line program that comes with apache by default in most distributions. It allows one to run a quick and efficient test of how a server can handle a heavy load of clients.
To use it simply run (as root)
ab -n number_of_requests_to_try http://www.websiteyouwanttobenchmark.com/
Note that the trailing / is necessary for ab [...]

awstats (at least on Debian) seems to default its configuration for log-file type to a “common” log, which for most of us is completely useless. This is mainly because common log files don’t provide enough information to justify running awstats in the first place.
So, in order to change this behaviour add/modify this in your awstats.conf [...]