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25
I'm a developer, and I generate big log files. I've tried several log viewer applications (free or not), so far mtail I like the most. But, it lacks features.
I would like from my log viewer to:
The question is:
Which log viewer would you recommend on Windows?
Mercer Traieste
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 2 112
49
BareTail, which has a free version, works pretty well for us for years.
huseyint
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 740
Positive: it opens logs VERY fast. Negative: the taskbar context menu is obnoxious. – John – 2015-08-23T11:16:06.630
The free version does not even have a search feature! – Jack Miller – 2017-01-30T08:05:21.853
According to Virustotal.com the free version was flagged by 2 anti-viruses as being malware. The Pro version comes out clean, though.
– Ploni – 2017-08-25T07:36:54.503BareTail is awesome. We use this all the time – pavsaund – 2009-08-08T07:21:42.013
I also use this too, but running it on server 2008 R2 causes somekind of memory-leak with wmiprvse.exe – maxlego – 2012-03-27T11:19:34.170
I've seen this tool used in many places. – Mercer Traieste – 2009-07-19T16:32:36.653
Found this answer by a search. Very cool product to recommend. – T. Stone – 2009-12-08T21:02:26.407
22
My new favorite log viewer is glogg. It makes finding stuff in noisy log files very easy. It could use a few more features but does 95% of everything I need it to do, it is open source, written in C++ using Qt and runs on Linux/Windows/Mac. Give it a try.
From the glogg description page:
glogg enables you to use regular expressions to search for interesting events in your log files. It presents a results window which, together with complex regular expressions allows easy isolation of the meaningful lines amongst the noise.
glogg has been primarily developed to help spot and understand problems in huge logs generated by embedded systems. It can be equally useful to a sysadmin digging through logs from databases or web servers.
The main design goals for glogg are:
- it should be fast
- it does not have any limit on the size of files it can handle
- it provides a clear view of the matches even in heavily cluttered files.
If you think it does not do that, it is a bug and it should be fixed!
C.Trauma
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 329
I can live without Unicode/UTF-8 support in a log viewer but Glogg does not (at as August 23rd, 2015) auto-reload automatically (you have to manually press F5) though it's find option is EXCELLENT. Almost ideal for viewing Apache access and MySQL query logs...almost and no dumb taskbar context menu like BareTail. – John – 2015-08-23T10:54:56.353
1Way too slow to load SQL queries log (266MB). – John – 2015-10-16T19:34:12.997
Like it, but wish it had line wrapping. It's a pain to view logs with long lines, which happens frequently with automated systems. – raychi – 2016-02-03T22:44:40.303
glogg unfortunately misses log file updates sometimes (never refreshes). – rustyx – 2016-07-05T09:29:17.300
UTF8 supported since version 1.1.1 (November 2016) – Jack Miller – 2017-01-30T08:06:49.167
For what it is worth: I've been evaluating glogg for a while, and have run into a number of somewhat serious issues such as 1) Locking the log file during loading so that the owning application is unable to write to the log file. 2) Freezing with 100% CPU usage when autorefreshing with the latest content. 3) Distribution of unsigned binaries over HTTP. 4) Auto-update notifications that cannot be disabled. ... – Zero3 – 2018-07-02T11:30:51.720
It's basic, but it works. A bit like baretail but on Mac. – gap – 2019-07-02T18:36:07.703
I love glogg except that it keeps files open. So if you forget to close glogg and your server goes to roll log files... This alone is causing me to look for another log viewer. Which is too bad. It's simple and does everything I need. – MikeJansen – 2020-02-17T12:42:03.160
2No UNICODE / UTF8 support – Yurik – 2012-12-06T11:00:43.177
15
Log Expert http://logexpert.codeplex.com/
Features:
f3lix
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 571
2Way too slow to load SQL queries log (266MB). – John – 2015-10-16T19:34:03.520
7It crashes all the time on my machine (Windows 7 x64) – payala – 2013-02-20T20:17:17.907
4
Take a look a logview4net it's free and has a different take on viewing log files.
A free (open source) log monitor / log viewer for:
* Files and folders
* Incomming UDP traffic
* EventLogs
* SQL- Server tables
* Atom and RSS feeds
* StdOut and StdErr
idstam
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 241
1Wanted money before doing anything useful. – John – 2015-10-16T19:34:41.470
1
There's a big download button on the page and NO money needed to use it. The source code is available from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/logview4net
– idstam – 2015-10-17T07:13:57.8571
... and now the source is here: https://github.com/idstam/logview4net
– idstam – 2018-02-19T12:52:18.7931This is amazing. I've been using Baretail for years and been waiting for something that competes. I've played around with it on a few folder listeners and memory is steady at 30MB and CPU never spikes. Very happy and also open-source so I can modify little things if I want and use my own build... perfect replacement... for just Windows though. – ScottN – 2019-02-22T16:42:28.273
Is there no portable version of logview4net out there? – Henrik – 2019-11-17T22:04:28.523
1@henrik I'll make one and link to it from the readme. – idstam – 2019-11-18T11:44:41.520
3
Installing MSYS gives you a close version to a Unix environment on Windows, you get all the main binaries. Using these tools you can achieve all the functionality you request using standard commands like tail, grep, less, etc.
demianturner
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 287
1+1. tail -f mylogfile.log (and you won't have to 'unlearn' it once you move past Windows ;) – rustyx – 2016-07-05T09:33:34.163
2
I wrote my own little logviewer just because of that, its really raw at the moment, but would be an ok starting point if anyone wanted to extend it.
Sam Saffron
Posted 2009-07-15T07:52:44.227
Reputation: 973
I saw we ban slhck for closing this thread, this thread is EXTREMELY constructive. – John – 2015-08-23T11:15:01.367
@slhck Why the **** is this thread not constructive?? – rustyx – 2016-07-05T09:27:46.763
@rustyx In the meantime we've revamped the reasons for closure — "not constructive" perhaps does not sound right. We do not allow software recommendation questions on this site (see [FAQ]). But the underlying reason is the same: questions like "plrease recommend me" are very subjective in nature. They are open-ended and it only comes down to "I like this more than this". There is no right answer there, and the questions do not solve a real problem. It'd be better to ask about what you want to do and how to solve that issue. – slhck – 2016-07-06T07:03:50.570
It's too bad there is not a way to migrate old and useful questions like this to the SW Recs site. Meanwhile there are some similar posts there, but with lower quality. – Ben Voigt – 2017-04-19T16:14:35.353
try ReflectInsight. I handles everything the requester asked. DISCLAIMER: I'm one of the developers for ReflectInsight. http://insightextensions.codeplex.com
– code5 – 2013-11-04T19:27:36.657