I'm trying to extract all lines of text from mail log file that contain specific string (mail address). I know using grep will allow me to search for the address [email protected], but how do I get it to print out the entire line that is containing [email protected]? That way I could easily scour vast ammounts of log files for precise information regarding from and to fields in order to find out with whom did the [email protected] have interactions.
Thank you in advance.
grep "mail\.addres@example\.org" filename.log
will print all lines containing [email protected]
Simple answer, using awk
awk '/mail\.addres@example\.org/' file.log
Clearly quite late to the party here, sounds similar to what I have been learning. I use sudo because I don't access things as root but that's personal preference I guess:
sudo grep "[email protected]" /path/to/file/mail.log
The output being plastered in the terminal (not ideal). I did find however that using redirection >:
> test.txt
Was a good idea. Yields the result with the command, bypass the output to the terminal window and put it straight into a file for me to open with notepad++ later. Something I did come across during my learning was the difference between one AND two angle brackets which was pretty handy:
> # Overwrites destination file with current output
>> # Adds current output to tail of file
Very handy when I don't want to keep creating new files for each search I do.
sudo (ie you don't need root privilege) to read most files, though I guess you might need it to read a mail log. Of course, running as root routinely is discouraged.
sudo for every command is nearly equivalent to running as root (i.e. a bad idea)... principle of least privilege