Reading Syslog

Each UN*X/Linux system is full of information about its services, what they are doing how they perform and if there are any problems. You just have to take a look into the logfiles. This section on awk-scripting deals with logfile things.

• One major source of information is your system's syslog file, usually this is /var/log/messages. tail -f /var/log/messages is one of the famous UN*X/Linux commands. csl is an awk script that helps watching the syslog by colouring the lines. Read how it works ...

• Once the idea behnd colouring is clear the concept can be ported to other logfile formats like apache's combined weblof format. But to make it more exciting the chl script gets a function to select loglines with an awk expression. See how to colour HTTP logfiles.

qmail-send Logfile Conversion

Did you ever run a qmail mail server? An did you experience the fun to read through the log files for a "Where is that mail?" request? If yes, then qmail-relog might be something for you, read about it.

Other files