mirror of
https://github.com/rsyslog/loganalyzer.git
synced 2025-09-14 05:28:17 +02:00
65 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
65 lines
3.5 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
|
|
<html><head>
|
|
<title>Using text log files with phpLogCon</title>
|
|
</head>
|
|
<body>
|
|
<h1>Using text log files with phpLogCon</h1>
|
|
<p><b>PhpLogcon natively supports operting on text log files.</b> So there
|
|
is no need to put log data into databases. Each approach has advantages
|
|
and disadvantages, which we will not discuss in this paper. Here, we focus
|
|
on how text log files are supported.
|
|
<p>We assume that the reader is familiar with <a href="basics.html">basic
|
|
phpLogCon concepts</a>. If you are not, get aquainted to them, first.
|
|
|
|
<h2>Requirements for text log files </h2>
|
|
<p>PhpLogCon can operate on any standard text log file, that means a file that
|
|
purely consists of printable characters and uses LF (linefeed, newline) characters
|
|
as log line terminators. Most importantly, this includes standard syslog files
|
|
as well as web server and other application logs.
|
|
<p>A data source is defined to pull data from a text log file. Note that only a single
|
|
text log file can be contained in any data source.
|
|
|
|
<h2>Working with text log files</h2>
|
|
<p><b>Text log files are just regular data sources. You can work with them like
|
|
with any other data sources, for example, you can browse them, search them,
|
|
generate graphics from the or base reports on their content.</b> Depending on the
|
|
size of the text log and on the operation being performed, performance may be
|
|
worse or even better than with using database-based data sources. For typical
|
|
operations and typical text file sizes, performance should be quite well.
|
|
<p>Note that some options make limited sense when working with text log files.
|
|
For example, you may set a filter with a broad date range, but the text log
|
|
file will, for obvious reasons, only provide what is currently contained in it.
|
|
For typical syslog files, that will probably mean they contain maximum one
|
|
day's data.
|
|
|
|
<h2>Use Cases for Text Log Files</h2>
|
|
<p>A typical use case is in a hosting environment. There, phpLogCon may
|
|
be used to do an online review of log data, via the web and without the need
|
|
to log into an SSH session. This can be very handy to learn what is currently
|
|
going on or, for example, to verify if an important mail left your system.
|
|
|
|
<p>Another use case is that you would like to keep an eye on some local text files,
|
|
for example while debugging an installation. Instead of reconfiguring your whole
|
|
logging system, you can set up a phpLogCon instance and point it to the log files
|
|
in question. Keep in mind that you are not restricted to syslog files. For example,
|
|
you may want to add additional application text log files as data sources as well.
|
|
With the cross-datasource search capability, you can quickly follow events across
|
|
the boundaries of log servers.
|
|
|
|
<p>For secuity sensitive-environments, the access to phpLogCon can be protected
|
|
by several levels, e.g. user authentication or IP ranges at the firewall or
|
|
http server level. Also, one may consider to activate a phpLogCon instance only
|
|
when actually needed to do troubleshooting and keep it "turned off" at other times.
|
|
The beauty of text log files is that you do not need to reconfigure the whole
|
|
logging system to do so. All that is needed is to disable the web site inside
|
|
the http server.
|
|
|
|
<p>[<a href="manual.html">manual index</a>] [<a href="http://www.phplogcon.com/">phpLogCon site</a>]</p>
|
|
<p><font size="2">This documentation is part of the
|
|
<a href="http://www.phplogcon.com/">phpLogCon</a>
|
|
project.<br>
|
|
Copyright © 2008 by
|
|
<a href="http://www.adiscon.com/">Adiscon</a>.
|
|
Released under the GNU GPL version 3 or higher.</font></p>
|
|
</body></html>
|