NAME¶
Parse::Syslog - Parse Unix syslog files
SYNOPSIS¶
my $parser = Parse::Syslog->new( '/var/log/syslog', year => 2001);
while(my $sl = $parser->next) {
... access $sl->{timestamp|host|program|pid|text} ...
}
DESCRIPTION¶
Unix syslogs are convenient to read for humans but because of small differences
between operating systems and things like 'last message repeated xx times' not
very easy to parse by a script.
Parse::Syslog presents a simple interface to parse syslog files: you create a
parser on a file (with
new) and call
next to get one line at a
time with Unix-timestamp, host, program, pid and text returned in a
hash-reference.
Constructing a Parser¶
new requires as first argument a source from where to get the syslog
lines. It can be:
- •
- a file-name for the syslog-file to be parsed.
- •
- an IO::Handle object.
- •
- a File::Tail object as first argument, in which case the read
method will be called to get lines to process.
After the file-name (or File::Tail object), you can specify options as a hash.
The following options are defined:
- type
- Format of the "syslog" file. Can be one of:
- year
- Syslog files usually do store the time of the event without year. With
this option you can specify the start-year of this log. If not specified,
it will be set to the current year.
- GMT
- If this option is set, the time in the syslog will be converted assuming
it is GMT time instead of local time.
- repeat
- Parse::Syslog will by default repeat xx times events that are followed by
messages like 'last message repeated xx times'. If you set this option to
false, it won't do that.
- arrayref
- If this option is true, next will return an array-ref instead of a
hash-ref (and is thus a bit faster), with the following contents:
- 0:
- timestamp
- 1:
- host
- 2:
- program
- 3:
- pid
- 4:
- text
- locale
- Optional. Specifies an additional locale name or the array of locale names
for the parsing of log files with national characters.
- allow_future
- If true will allow for timestamps in the future. Otherwise timestamps of
one day in the future and more will not be returned (as a safety measure
against wrong configurations, bogus --year arguments, etc.)
Parsing the file¶
The file is parse one line at a time by calling the
next method, which
returns a hash-reference containing the following keys:
- timestamp
- Unix timestamp for the event.
- host
- Host-name where the event did happen.
- program
- Program-name of the program that generated the event.
- pid
- PID of the Program that generated the event. This information is not
always available for every operating system.
- text
- Text description of the event.
- msgid
- Message numeric identifier, available only on Solaris >= 8 with
"message ID generation" enabled".
- facility
- Log facility name, available only on Solaris >= 8 with "message ID
generation" enabled".
- level
- Log level, available only on Solaris >= 8 with "message ID
generation" enabled".
BUGS¶
There are many small differences in the syslog syntax between operating systems.
This module has been tested for syslog files produced by the following
operating systems:
Debian GNU/Linux 2.4 (sid)
Solaris 2.6
Solaris 8
Report problems for these and other operating systems to the author.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (c) 2001, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. All Rights
Reserved.
LICENSE¶
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
same terms as Perl itself.
AUTHOR¶
David Schweikert <dws@ee.ethz.ch>
HISTORY¶
2001-08-12 ds 0.01 first version
2001-08-19 ds 0.02 fix 'last message repeated xx times', Solaris 8 problems
2001-08-20 ds 0.03 implemented GMT option, year specification, File::Tail
2001-10-31 ds 0.04 faster time parsing, implemented 'arrayref' option, better time-increment algorithm
2002-01-29 ds 0.05 ignore -- MARK -- lines, low-case months, space in program names
2002-05-02 ds 1.00 HP-UX fixes, parse 'above message repeats xx times'
2002-05-25 ds 1.01 added support for localized month names (uchum@mail.ru)
2002-10-28 ds 1.02 fix off-by-one-hour error when running during daylight saving time switch
2004-01-19 ds 1.03 do not allow future dates (if allow_future is not true)
2004-07-11 ds 1.04 added support for type 'metalog'
2005-12-24 ds 1.05 allow passing of a IO::Handle object to new