Terminal Dashboard for Monitoring Log Files

logtail displays one or more log files in the terminal in the manner of tail -f.

Features of logtail:

• it displays more than one logfile, one above the other or side-by-side
• the display updates as each logfile grows
• use tab or arrow keys to navigate and scroll
• you can fork logtail-dash to create customised views of your logfile data

logtail is written in Rust and uses tui-rs to create the terminal UI, and linemux to monitor the logfiles.

Operating Systems

• Linux: works on Ubuntu.
• Windows: works on Windows 10.
• MacOS: let me know what happens!

Install from crates.io

1 Install Rust via https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html

2 Linux (Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install build-essential

3a. Linux/MacOS install logtail:

cargo install logtail
logtail --help

3b. Windows install logtail-crossterm:

To build on Windows you must use the 'nightly' compiler until the 'itarget' feature becomes part of 'stable', so install Rust nightly using rustup:

rustup toolchain install nightly

To build logtail-crossterm on Windows, clone logtail-dash, build with +nightly and use the binary it creates under ./taget/release:

git clone https://github.com/happybeing/logtail-dash
cd logtail-dash
cargo +nightly build -Z features=itarget --bin logtail-crossterm --release --no-default-features

./target/release/logtail-crossterm --help

Note: vdash is a fork of logtail that provides a dashboard for SAFE Network Vaults (see vdash).

Usage

In the terminal type the command and the paths of one or more logfiles you want to monitor. For example:

logtail /var/log/auth.log /var/log/kern.log

When the dashboard is active, pressing 'v' or 'h' switches between horizontal and vertical arrangments (when viewing more than one logfile).

For more information:

logtail --help

Customised Logfile Dashboards

If you want to use the core functionality of logtail-dash to create a customised terminal display based on real time updates to files, you can do this by creating a fork and customising the files in src/custom:

src/custom/opt.rs: command line options and usage

src/custom/app.rs: application logic (e.g. parsing logfiles to `dashboard state)

src/custom/ui.rs : dashboard display and keyboard/mouse interface

Example: vdash is a fork of logtail that provides a dashboard for SAFE Network Vaults (see vdash).

Build

Get pre-requisites

1. Get Rust: see: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/getting-started/installation.html

Get code

git clone https://github.com/happybeing/logtail-dash
cd logtail-dash

Build

Linux / MacOS

Builds logtail which uses the termion backend (see tui-rs). Note: MacOS is untested

cargo build --bin logtail --features="termion" --release

Windows 10

Builds logtail-crossterm which uses the crossterm backend (see tui-rs), with the intention to support Windows.

NOT working on Windows yet, this is being worked on at the moment. Help with testing appreciated.

cargo build --bin logtail-crossterm --features="crossterm" --release

Quick Test

Here's a couple of useful commands to build and run logtail to monitor a couple of Linux logfiles.

Open two terminals and in one run logtail-dash with:

cargo run --bin logtail --features="termion"  /var/log/auth.log /var/log/kern.log

In a second terminal you can affect the first logfile by trying and failing to 'su root':

su root </dev/null

You can use any logfiles for this basic level of testing. Here are some to try:

/var/log/syslog
/var/log/auth.log 
/var/log/lastlog
/var/log/dmesg
/var/log/kern.log
/var/log/boot.log

LICENSE

Everything is GPL3.0 unless otherwise stated. Any contributions are accepted on the condition they conform to this license.

See also ./LICENSE