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Could you recommend a GUI application with powerful log watching capabilities?

Generally it would work as tail -f in GUI, but on top of that following features would be very useful:

  • filtering out some lines based on (regular) expressions
  • coloring some lines based on (regular) expressions
  • interactive search
  • saveable configuration easily applicable to different files
  • notifications based on (regular) expressions

A similar tool on Windows is BareTail and its paid version - BareTailPro

7 Answers 7

41

I've discovered glogg, which describes itself as:

glogg is a multi-platform GUI application to browse and search through long or complex log files. It is designed with programmers and system administrators in mind. glogg can be seen as a graphical, interactive combination of grep and less.

It will also tail files if you enable the Follow File option.

Just search Ubuntu's Software Center!

Installation through command line:

sudo apt-get install glogg
6
  • This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks man. Mar 8, 2013 at 23:57
  • 1
    I chose this one over Multitail as the latter is actually an ncurses GUI running inside a terminal, while glogg is a true GUI (Qt).
    – Didier L
    Jan 22, 2016 at 10:30
  • this one is very good: simple, fast and highlight supports.
    – Nadir
    Oct 24, 2016 at 9:32
  • It's a great tool unless you need Unicode characters
    – Amir Uval
    Nov 3, 2016 at 16:46
  • This tool works nicely for parsing/coloring different logs produced by software. I just wish that it would have support for plug-ins.
    – wojci
    Mar 3, 2017 at 11:32
21

Multitail is what you searching for:

it has tons of features. look here for some screenshots.

Also have a look at this question over there at serverfault.com

2
  • I like this one. I am giving it a try. Jan 7, 2011 at 7:57
  • 4
    Update: this is definetely the tool I've been searching for. Jan 16, 2011 at 15:37
14

Some options are: Swatch and KSystemLog

There's a log viewer built into Ubuntu, which can also open any log file, called System Log.

3

and there is lnav with colored logs and search from terminal. https://github.com/tstack/lnav enter image description here

2

There is also opentail: http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php?content=161456

This is a really nice tailer with a lot of functions

0

I am using Follow https://sourceforge.net/projects/follow/

simple portable java application, you can follow multiple files and drap & drop them.

0

After desperately searching, then trying out lnav and many other log viewers for the macOS, I finally found the most powerful solution with least things to learn:

Microsoft Excel!

  • Create a blank sheet
  • Import your log file as text data and select delimiter accordingly

...Now you have all the super powers of tabular data manipulation!

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  • Excel is quite useful and many of us using Windows at work already have it, so it is good for log file analysis, but does this also tail the log file, adding new data as it is logged?
    – RufusVS
    Sep 17, 2020 at 13:47
  • @RufusVS I believe that will require some macro or scripting, if possible at all.
    – dz902
    Sep 18, 2020 at 6:58
  • That's what I thought. The original question was for a log "watcher" not log "analyzer", so Excel on its own is not sufficient.
    – RufusVS
    Sep 19, 2020 at 21:04
  • Yeah I realize that. Landed on this question when searching for an easy-to-use log visualizer / analyzer and all of a sudden found Excel could do the job so might as well post it here just in case :)
    – dz902
    Sep 20, 2020 at 2:45

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