LOGFETCH(1)

💖 LOGFETCH(1) — the Xymon client data collector, section 1 of the General Commands Manual 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because this one is lowkey iconic in the "quietly keeping your whole monitoring setup alive" way 🫶

---

✨ NAME ✨

logfetch — Xymon client data collector 👑

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

logfetch [options] CONFIGFILE STATUSFILE

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So logfetch is literally part of the Xymon client. Its whole job? Collecting data from logfiles, plus other file-related data, and then sending all of that off to the Xymon server so the server can do the analysis. It's giving middleman, but make it essential 💅

logfetch uses a configuration file that gets automatically retrieved from the Xymon server. There is no configuration done locally. The config file is usually stored at $XYMONHOME/tmp/logfetch.cfg, but ngl — editing that file does absolutely nothing, because it gets re-written with data from the Xymon server every single time the client runs. so don't waste your time on it, babe 😭

logfetch keeps track of what parts of the monitored logfiles have already been processed in the $XYMONHOME/tmp/logfetch.status file. This one is an internal file used by logfetch, and it should not be edited. And if you delete it? it just re-creates itself automatically. main character energy fr fr ✨

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --debug[=stderr] — turns debug mode on 🔍. heads up though: when it's run by the xymonclient, the debug output might get written into the client data report, which can cause false positives and other unintended side effects 💀. If you want the output to go to stderr instead, use =stderr.
• --noexec — so the client-local.cfg(5) section for this host, class, or OS gets automatically retrieved from the server during client submission. And logfetch can be asked to execute arbitrary commands to generate a list of log files to examine dynamically — which, in some environments, is a whole security risk 😬. Set this option to stop logfetch from executing any requested commands. periodt.

---

🔒 SECURITY 🔒

logfetch needs read access to the logfiles it's supposed to monitor. If you configure monitoring of files or directories through the "file:" and "dir:" entries in client-local.cfg(5), then logfetch will need at least read-access to the directory where the file lives. And if you request checksum calculation for a file, then that file has to be readable by the Xymon client user. no exceptions bestie 🫶

🚨 Do NOT install logfetch as suid-root. 🚨

There is literally no way for logfetch to check whether the configuration file it uses has been tampered with, so installing logfetch with suid-root privileges could let an attacker read any file on the system just by using a hand-crafted configuration file. and honestly? logfetch will attempt to remove its own suid-root setup if it detects that it's been installed suid-root. it's self-aware like that 💀👑

---

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

• DU — the command used to collect information about the size of directories. By default, this is the command du -k. If the local du-command on the client doesn't recognize the -k option, you should set the DU environment variable in the $XYMONHOME/etc/xymonclient.cfg file to a command that does report directory sizes in kilobytes. iykyk 📏

---

🎀 FILES 🎀

• $XYMONHOME/tmp/logfetch.cfg
• $XYMONHOME/tmp/logfetch.status

---

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

xymon(7), analysis.cfg(5), client-local.cfg(5)

---

and that's the whole vibe, bestie 🦋 go forth and monitor those logs responsibly 💜

Xymon — Version 4.3.30: 4 Sep 2019 — LOGFETCH(1) 💖 mwah, catch you in the next manpage ✨🌸