Swatch (Simple Log Watcher) is designed to monitor system activity. Swatch started out as the “simple watchdog” for actively monitoring log files produced by UNIX’s syslog facility. It has since evolved into a handy utility that can monitor just about any type of log.
A typical action is echoing the matched line in a variety of colours and formats including reverse video, bold, underline, and normal, which swatch knows how to do internally. Other actions include sending mail or executing an arbitrary program on the line.
Swatch is written in Perl and uses Perl regular expressions for line matching. In order for Swatch to be useful, it requires a configuration file which contains pattern(s) to look for and action(s) to perform when each pattern is found.
Key Features
- Simple to configure.
- Regular expression matching.
- Highlighting.
- Hooks.
- Send e-mails based on matching log strings.
- Execute in the background.
Website: sourceforge.net/projects/swatch
Support: Forum
Developer: Todd Atkins
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
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Related Software
| LogFile Viewers | |
|---|---|
| lnav | Curses-based utility for viewing and analyzing log files. |
| tailspin | Terminal log file highlighter designed for inspecting log output in the shell |
| journalctl | Query and display messages from the journal |
| hl | Inspect structured logs from the terminal |
| Nerdlog | Remote-first terminal log viewer |
| lazyjournal | Inspect logs from multiple sources |
| KSystemLog | System log viewer for KDE |
| Logdy | Lightweight log viewer that works just like grep, awk, sed, or jq |
| humanlog | Reads logs from stdin and prints them back to stdout, but prettier. |
| toolong | View, tail, merge, and search log files |
| Xlogmaster | GTK+ based program to keep track of logfiles and devices |
| QJournalctl | Graphical User Interface for systemd’s journalctl |
| logrifle | Designed to "rifle through" large logfiles |
| Gnome-logs | View and search logs with this graphical utility |
| frontail | Stream logs to your web browser |
| nless | Pager for exploring structured and semi-structured data |
| glogg | Qt graphical log explorer |
| Chipmunk | Fast logfile viewer that can deal with huge logfiles (>10 GB) |
| SEE | Inspect logs from systemd services |
| MultiTail | View multiple logfiles windowed on the console |
| Logria | Log aggregation tool |
| logana | Work efficiently with very large log files, including multi-GB logs |
| QLogExplorer | Qt-based tool for exploring log files |
| Grafito | Simple, self-contained web-based log viewer for journalctl |
| swatch | Logfile viewer with regexp matching, highlighting & hooks |
| logmaster-gtk-d | Log viewer for Linux built with GTK and D |
| LogLens | Linux equivalent to Windows Event Viewer |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Console Log File Analyzers | |
|---|---|
| journalctl | Query and display messages from the journal |
| lnav | Curses-based tool for viewing and analyzing log files |
| Gonzo | Go based TUI for log analysis |
| angle-grinder | Slice and dice logs |
| MultiTail | Monitor logfiles and command output in multiple windows |
| Chipmunk | Fast logfile viewer that can deal with huge logfiles (>10 GB) |
| TWSLA | Work with large log sets without deploying a heavier log management stack |
| Swatch | Simple Log Watcher is a useful tool to monitor just about any type of log |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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