Colorize Monitoring of Logs

Question

I sometimes monitor apache and php error logs using tail under FreeBSD. Is there any way to get colorized output, either using tail or some other command line app?

Alternatively, what is your favorite way to monitor the various web-related logs in realtime?

score 31 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 12 '20 at 13:55

Generic Colouriser (grc):

Works with many different file formats.

Example:

grc tail -f /var/log/apache/access.log /var/log/apache/error.log

Multitail:

alt text

Works with even more file formats :) And is more of a full blown "tail" with multi windows, diff outputs etc.. Very useful.

Examples:

Merge 2 logfiles in one window:

multitail /var/log/apache/access.log -I /var/log/apache/error.log

In one window show all new TCP connections and their state changes using netstat while in the other window displaying the merged access and error logfiles of apache

multitail -R 2 -l "netstat -t" /var/log/apache/access.log -I /var/log/apache/error.log

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 16 '15 at 12:12

20

Check out CCZE, it does the job for me. You have a choice of curses, ansi and html output.

edited Jun 16 '15 at 12:12

Taz

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answered Aug 13 '09 at 18:23

Coops

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Where is the download link? It's broken at that site. Screenshot looks good, but, without a link.... – mpbloch Aug 13 '09 at 18:31
Ok, I found it under Lenny packages, but I am missing some files I guess. I'll get ncurses. – mpbloch Aug 13 '09 at 18:42
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It's working for me in ubuntu 16.04LTS, just apt-get install ccze. To use it, "tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log | ccze" It's really useful you can export the output to html too! – Salvador P. May 10 '16 at 13:39
[Host@root:~]# yum install ccze -y – User9102d82 Jun 04 '18 at 16:37

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 30 '15 at 04:11

4

Monitor '/applications' highlighted;

tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep /Applications --color

edited Sep 30 '15 at 04:11

HBruijn

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answered Oct 02 '09 at 21:14

mowarren

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that grep will also filter the results – nbv4 Nov 12 '12 at 21:36

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 02 '09 at 22:45

3

Check out glTail (http://www.fudgie.org/). Does way more than you're asking, but maybe that's OK

answered Oct 02 '09 at 22:45

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 26 '10 at 22:21

Colorize is very good tool for simply piping your text through another filter to get fancy ANSI colors. In fact, it's one simple 4kB perl script (almost half of it is just documentation) and it's based on regular expressions.

You can highlight whole line containing given patern (good for hiding unwanted debug logs or highlighting Exceptions) or just highlight pattern in uncolored line (highlighting http response codes).

I have several presets for various file types in separate runnable files. Then I just run mvn clear install | colorbuild, tail -f *.log* | colorlog or svn diff | colordif to have really fancy output.

available at https://web.archive.org/web/20080321072656/http://www.flinkmann.de/colorize-pl.71.1.html — andrej, Feb 13 '14 at 15:40

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 18 '20 at 16:37

I wrote TxtStyle, a small utility for colorising logs. You define regular expressions to highlight in ~/.txts.conf file:

[Style="example"]
!red: regex("error")
green: regex("\d{4}-\d\d-\d\d")
# ...

And then apply the styles:

txts -n example example.log

or you can also pipe the output

tail -f example.log | txts -n example

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 13 '09 at 18:07

0

You might want to try histring, lets you color most of the outputs with simple ANSI codes http://www.freebsdsoftware.org/misc/histring.html

answered Aug 13 '09 at 18:07

Ryan Coates

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abandonware (master site no longer exists) – sendmoreinfo Feb 17 '13 at 00:33

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 17 '17 at 22:41

0

On FreeBSD use colorize. and add in .tailrc:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/tail "$@" | /usr/local/bin/colorize

edited Jan 17 '17 at 22:41

kasperd

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answered Jan 17 '17 at 21:50

huankarlos

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Colorize Monitoring of Logs

8 Answers8

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