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Unfundednut
Asked: 2009-10-19 23:09:15 +0800 CST

CLI security program via tail

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I am looking for a cli (command line interface) program that would basically tail either 1 log or a set of logs in /var/log and on the fly output in a more friendly manner. Perl would be best but isn't a prerequisite.

command-line-interface

2 Answers

  1. Multitail allows you to "tail" several files at once. You could also open several windows inside a screen session and run less -F in each.

    As for "output in a more friendly manner", that's very subjective, and also individual for each app. There are log viewers for many popular servers, e.g. AWStats. Just see if it does what you need. What exactly do you want to check?

    Finally, instead of watching logs, for long-term server maintenance a monitoring software probably makes more sense. Check out e.g. Nagios or ZenOSS.

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  2. Best Answer

    If your system has watch and you're looking for something quick and dirty:

    watch '( tail /var/log/logone;/bin/echo -e "\n--------\n";tail /var/log/logtwo )'

    It's not necessary to use -f with tail since watch updates the display.

    There are other better solutions, but if you find yourself in a bind sometimes this kind of thing will help.

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