Five Log Monitoring Tools
Small Supervisor
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Anyone wanting to monitor logfiles could use one of the big dogs like Nagios or Icinga. However, lightweight alternatives can also sniff out threats and take much less time to set up. We put five of these little guard dogs to the test.
A system's logfiles not only record failed login attempts by users, but they also log program errors and information about attacks. Admins therefore should keep a continuous eye on them. Tools such as LOGalyze [1], Logcheck [2], Logwatch [3], MultiTail [4], and SwatchDog [5] can help you here.
Unlike with large monitoring solutions like Nagios and Icinga, the minor variants focus on analyzing logfiles. They use fewer resources and can be set up much more quickly. They are therefore ideally suited for use on weak hardware and embedded devices like the Raspberry Pi, as well as on servers with few selected services.
All candidates use one or more logfiles and filter out important messages according to predefined rules. As an option, they can send the result by email to the administrator or output it on the command line. Admins can also add their own filter rules, usually in the form of regular expressions. Sometimes the developer provides a set of oft-needed rules. Powerful tools may also put together a report about the state of the system and indicate security problems. However, a comparison of the above candidates shows that these functions are not a matter of course (Table 1).
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