SYSLOG-SUMMARY(1)

πŸ‘‘ SYSLOG-SUMMARY(1) β€” the Syslog-Summary User Manual, bestie edition ✨

okay so. welcome to the Syslog-Summary User Manual, aka the manual page for syslog-summary, and honestly? it's giving "your log files are a mess and we're about to fix that". let's go πŸ’…


🌸 NAME 🌸

syslog-summary β€” summarize the contents of a syslog log file


✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

syslog-summary [-s | --state= filename] [-i | --ignore= filename]
               [-d | --debug] [-r | --repeat] logfile...

syslog-summary [-h | --help]

πŸ’– DESCRIPTION πŸ’–

This manual page documents briefly the syslog-summary command. yes, briefly, because we have places to be πŸ¦‹

syslog-summary summarizes the contents of log files via the syslog(3) service, by displaying each unique (except for the time) line once, and also the number of times such a line occurs in the input. The lines are displayed in the order they occur in the input.

so like, imagine your log file is 40,000 lines of the same thing happening over and over β€” not anymore bestie 😭. same line (minus the timestamp) shows up once, with a lil count next to it. and the order? preserved, exactly like it appeared in the input. periodt. ✨


πŸŽ€ OPTIONS πŸŽ€

  • -i filename, --ignore=filename β€” Read regular expressions from filename and ignore lines in the logfiles that match them. matching lines just get filtered out of the vibe check entirely 🚫
  • -s filename, --state=filename β€” Read state information from filename. The state contains information about the already reported parts of a log file, and prevents syslog-summary from reporting the same things many times. This is useful when syslog-summary is run from crontab every hour. The file is created, if it doesnΒ΄t exist already.
  • -r, --repeat β€” Merge "last message repeated * times" lines with the repeated event. no more duplicate drama, we're consolidating 🫢
  • -d, --debug β€” Enable verbose messages when errors occur (i.e. "debug mode"). it's giving detective energy πŸ”
  • -h, --help β€” Show summary of options. the classic, the icon, the legend πŸ‘‘

πŸ¦‹ FILES πŸ¦‹

  • /etc/syslog-summary/ignore.rules β€” Default ignore.rules file with default regular expressions.

πŸ’€ DIAGNOSTICS πŸ’€

When reporting a bug, please run syslog-summary with the -d (or --debug) flag enabled. fr fr, do it β€” otherwise the maintainers are just guessing and nobody wants that πŸ™ˆ

syslog-summary provides some return codes, that can be used in scripts:

  • Code 0 β€” Program exited successfully. πŸŽ‰
  • Code 1 β€” Something went wrong, please run the program with the debug messages enabled.
so like, if you get a 1, that's your cue to rerun with -d and see what's actually going down. no cap. πŸ’…

πŸ‘‘ AUTHORS πŸ‘‘

  • Lars Wirzenius <liw@iki.fi>
    • Wrote this manpage for the Debian system.
    • Wrote the first version of syslog-summary.
    • Maintained the Debian package from 1998 to 2000.
  • Tommi Virtanen <tv@debian.org>
    • Maintained the package from 2001 to early 2008.
  • David Paleino <d.paleino@gmail.com>
    • Maintains the package since early 2008.

absolute legends, all three of them 🌈


Copyright Β© 2008 David Paleino Copyright Β© 2001-2007 Tommi Virtanen Copyright Β© 1998-2000 Lars Wirzenius

This manual page was written for the Debian system (but may be used by others).

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 3 or (at your option) any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.

On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.


and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it πŸ’–

this masterpiece of a manual page is brought to you by syslog-summary, dated 02/07/2008, and it lives in the SYSLOG-SUMMARY(1) section of the manual β€” go forth and summarize, you gorgeous genius πŸŽ€βœ¨πŸ¦‹

πŸ“¦ where this page comes from