Five Log Monitoring Tools
Learn to Love the Dog
The choice of the appropriate tool massively depends on the specific requirements and your personal programming skills. None of the five candidates can replace a full-scale monitoring system, let alone an intrusion detection system. In any case, administrators need to interpret the sent system events themselves. See the "Old Comrades" box for some other alternatives.
Old Comrades
Anyone searching the Internet for other alternatives to the featured tools will automatically stumble upon a few representatives that are now obsolete. The Logdigest [6] tool works like Logcheck, but has been on ice since 2009. LogSurfer [7] is pretty similar to SwatchDog, but can also group similar events. In addition, LogSurfer is written in C and should therefore work much more quickly. However, the most recent version of the tool was released in September 2011.
Petit [8] is about the same age, but it is still in the repositories of Ubuntu. The tool uses language analysis methods to curb the flood of data, especially in system logs. This allows administrators to, for example, list all words that occur particularly frequently in a logfile. In addition, the tool draws a graph that presents the number of messages in a given period of time (Figure 9). The hash function, which keeps track of similar messages in the log, is also interesting. It allows the viewer to immediately see which errors occur most frequently.
LOGalyze provides a GUI and can also be remotely operated via your browser. However, anyone who wants to use the tool should remember the tool's age. The supplied Tomcat version also needs to be replaced as quickly as possible. Admins also need to be able to figure out for themselves how to use LOGalyze.
Logcheck can be put into operation particularly quickly. Anyone who masters regular expressions can reduce the flood of data using quickly added and customized filtering rules. While Logcheck only sends the naked events to the admin, Logwatch provides the admin with a summary. If admins want to monitor their own services using Logwatch, they need Perl scripts.
MultiTail is worthwhile for administrators who literally want to keep an eye on several logfiles and only want to trigger actions in certain cases. Sending emails and forwarding filtered events may be possible; however, to do so admins need to write suitable regular expressions and manually configure MultiTail. The tool is therefore useful as a very good supplement to Logcheck and Logwatch.
Finally, SwatchDog is comparable to Logwatch: It can be set up quickly but requires knowledge of regular expressions. Additionally, it only reports individual events specified by the administrator.
Infos
- LOGalyze: http://www.logalyze.com
- Logcheck: http://logcheck.alioth.debian.org
- Logwatch: https://sourceforge.net/projects/logwatch/
- MultiTail: https://www.vanheusden.com/multitail/
- SwatchDog: https://sourceforge.net/projects/swatch/
- Logdigest: https://sourceforge.net/projects/logdigest/
- LogSurfer: http://www.crypt.gen.nz/logsurfer/
- Petit: http://crunchtools.com/software/petit/
« Previous 1 2
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.