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Ask HN: What do you use to view logs?

12 points by iimpact ↗ HN
Looking for solutions out there, or recommendations for macOS. Specifically, static log files (structured JSON) that is easy to filter and has color coding (log levels).

What I am finding is that there are mainly "tail" type log viewers via the terminal, or cloud based. I'm looking for something local I can install.

10 comments

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cpach
I guess many people use Graylog, Splunk or similar web-based systems (which can be self-hosted if you like) and are content with that. Not sure if there are any readymade applications for using locally on your Mac.

Maybe you can hack something together with jq + Bash + awk etc?

These tools might also be useful:

https://kantord.github.io/emuto/

https://github.com/antonmedv/fx

Best of luck!

iimpact
appreciate the info.. will check these out
toomuchtodo
Graylog for centralized logging, jless locally.
iimpact
jless looks pretty awesome.. using lnav right now, but jless has a lot more pre-built json handling from what I can tell
skinnymuch
Is http://www.logtailapp.com/ too simple or would it work?
iimpact
How do you like this? I did come across it when I was searching
skinnymuch
Sorry for late reply if you see this at all.

I like it. I assume there isn’t an alternative so I’m forgiving of any friction or limitation as it has enough of the basics to do most things. The main thing id like is better UX with filtering/highlighting things. It does support those things though

throwawayninja
Lame but powerful option: `tail -f /logfile.log | grep -A10 -B10 <interesting thing>`. (prints 10 lines before & after search lines). The most powerful feature I've had in log management is the ability to search for what was interesting, and no tool can provide you a "this is interesting" button. If you've got performance concerns ripgrep is a drop-in grep replacement that's very fast.
tstack
The Logfile Navigator (https://lnav.org) is a TUI for viewing log files that can be configured to process structured JSON files. It has quite a few features, like filtering and color coding.

The documentation for writing a format file is here -- https://docs.lnav.org/en/latest/formats.html

The format file tells lnav what common fields are in the log messages and how to format them into plaintext for display. Here's an example configuration for JSON logs -- https://github.com/tstack/fullsail_lnav_config/blob/master/f...