Tools to monitor log files

[wvsa]

Good afternoon;

Trying to find out how my fellow linux admins are monitoring their log files. Is anyone using swatch? If so where can I download swatch for redhat linux as4. Are there other log monitoring tools, tools that will work in the same vain as swatch, the ability to send a email when certain patterns are detected/noted in the log files.

Thank you for the input, will do my best to assign points.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Since almost everybody needs something different, the best tool in my opinion are your own shell scripts.

You grep the log file, look for critical terms and use mail -s to send the output to email.

Example:

lbolts=$(grep -i lbolt /var/log/messages| wc -l)

lbolt(a hpux disk error)is searched for int he log and converted to a count.

if [ $lbolt -ge 1 ]
then
echo "Disk error" | mail -s "Disk Error" yourmail@your.net
fi

The if/fi loop should be self evident.

SEP

[Stuart Browne]

'logwatch' (which should already be on your RH machine) does a fantastic job too.. and is fairly easily cusomizable.

It's just set to run once-a-day by default, but you can change that pretty easily.