Is that possible to use grep on a continuous stream?
What I mean is sort of a tail -f <file> command, but with grep on the output in order to keep only the lines that interest me.
I've tried tail -f <file> | grep pattern but it seems that grep can only be executed once tail finishes, that is to say never.
Turn on grep's line buffering mode when using BSD grep (FreeBSD, Mac OS X etc.)
tail -f file | grep --line-buffered my_pattern
It looks like a while ago --line-buffered didn't matter for GNU grep (used on pretty much any Linux) as it flushed by default (YMMV for other Unix-likes such as SmartOS, AIX or QNX). However, as of November 2020, --line-buffered is needed (at least with GNU grep 3.5 in openSUSE, but it seems generally needed based on comments below).
I use the tail -f <file> | grep <pattern> all the time.
It will wait till grep flushes, not till it finishes (I'm using Ubuntu).
I think that your problem is that grep uses some output buffering. Try
tail -f file | stdbuf -o0 grep my_pattern
it will set output buffering mode of grep to unbuffered.
If you want to find matches in the entire file (not just the tail), and you want it to sit and wait for any new matches, this works nicely:
tail -c +0 -f <file> | grep --line-buffered <pattern>
The -c +0 flag says that the output should start 0 bytes (-c) from the beginning (+) of the file.
In most cases, you can tail -f /var/log/some.log |grep foo and it will work just fine.
If you need to use multiple greps on a running log file and you find that you get no output, you may need to stick the --line-buffered switch into your middle grep(s), like so:
tail -f /var/log/some.log | grep --line-buffered foo | grep bar
you may consider this answer as enhancement .. usually I am using
tail -F <fileName> | grep --line-buffered <pattern> -A 3 -B 5
-F is better in case of file rotate (-f will not work properly if file rotated)
-A and -B is useful to get lines just before and after the pattern occurrence .. these blocks will appeared between dashed line separators
But For me I prefer doing the following
tail -F <file> | less
this is very useful if you want to search inside streamed logs. I mean go back and forward and look deeply
Didn't see anyone offer my usual go-to for this:
less +F <file>
ctrl + c
/<search term>
<enter>
shift + f
I prefer this, because you can use ctrl + c to stop and navigate through the file whenever, and then just hit shift + f to return to the live, streaming search.
sed would be a better choice (stream editor)
tail -n0 -f <file> | sed -n '/search string/p'
and then if you wanted the tail command to exit once you found a particular string:
tail --pid=$(($BASHPID+1)) -n0 -f <file> | sed -n '/search string/{p; q}'
Obviously a bashism: $BASHPID will be the process id of the tail command. The sed command is next after tail in the pipe, so the sed process id will be $BASHPID+1.
Yes, this will actually work just fine. Grep and most Unix commands operate on streams one line at a time. Each line that comes out of tail will be analyzed and passed on if it matches.
This one command workes for me (Suse):
mail-srv:/var/log # tail -f /var/log/mail.info |grep --line-buffered LOGIN >> logins_to_mail
collecting logins to mail service
Coming some late on this question, considering this kind of work as an important part of monitoring job, here is my (not so short) answer...
Following logs using bash
1. Command tail
This command is a little more porewfull than read on already published answer
Difference between follow option tail -f and tail -F, from manpage:
-f, --follow[={name|descriptor}]
output appended data as the file grows;
...
-F same as --follow=name --retry
...
--retry
keep trying to open a file if it is inaccessible
This mean: by using -F instead of -f, tail will re-open file(s) when removed (on log rotation, for sample).
This is usefull for watching logfile over many days.
Ability of following more than one file simultaneously
I've already used:
tail -F /var/www/clients/client*/web*/log/{error,access}.log /var/log/{mail,auth}.log \
/var/log/apache2/{,ssl_,other_vhosts_}access.log \
/var/log/pure-ftpd/transfer.log
For following events through hundreds of files... (consider rest of this answer to understand how to make it readable... ;)
Using switches -n (Don't use -c for line buffering!).By default tail will show 10 last lines. This can be tunned:
tail -n 0 -F file
Will follow file, but only new lines will be printed
tail -n +0 -F file
Will print whole file before following his progression.
2. Buffer issues when piping:
If you plan to filter ouptuts, consider buffering! See -u option for sed, --line-buffered for grep, or stdbuf command:
tail -F /some/files | sed -une '/Regular Expression/p'
Is (a lot more efficient than using grep) a lot more reactive than if you does'nt use -u switch in sed command.
tail -F /some/files |
sed -une '/Regular Expression/p' |
stdbuf -i0 -o0 tee /some/resultfile
3. Recent journaling system
On recent system, instead of tail -f /var/log/syslog you have to run journalctl -xf, in near same way...
journalctl -axf | sed -une '/Regular Expression/p'
But read man page, this tool was built for log analyses!
4. Integrating this in a bash script
Colored output of two files (or more)
Here is a sample of script watching for many files, coloring ouptut differently for 1st file than others:
#!/bin/bash
tail -F "$#" |
sed -une "
/^==> /{h;};
//!{
G;
s/^\\(.*\\)\\n==>.*${1//\//\\\/}.*<==/\\o33[47m\\1\\o33[0m/;
s/^\\(.*\\)\\n==> .* <==/\\o33[47;31m\\1\\o33[0m/;
p;}"
They work fine on my host, running:
sudo ./myColoredTail /var/log/{kern.,sys}log
Interactive script
You may be watching logs for reacting on events?
Here is a little script playing some sound when some USB device appear or disappear, but same script could send mail, or any other interaction, like powering on coffe machine...
#!/bin/bash
exec {tailF}< <(tail -F /var/log/kern.log)
tailPid=$!
while :;do
read -rsn 1 -t .3 keyboard
[ "${keyboard,}" = "q" ] && break
if read -ru $tailF -t 0 _ ;then
read -ru $tailF line
case $line in
*New\ USB\ device\ found* ) play /some/sound.ogg ;;
*USB\ disconnect* ) play /some/othersound.ogg ;;
esac
printf "\r%s\e[K" "$line"
fi
done
echo
exec {tailF}<&-
kill $tailPid
You could quit by pressing Q key.
you certainly won't succeed with
tail -f /var/log/foo.log |grep --line-buffered string2search
when you use "colortail" as an alias for tail, eg. in bash
alias tail='colortail -n 30'
you can check by
type alias
if this outputs something like
tail isan alias of colortail -n 30.
then you have your culprit :)
Solution:
remove the alias with
unalias tail
ensure that you're using the 'real' tail binary by this command
type tail
which should output something like:
tail is /usr/bin/tail
and then you can run your command
tail -f foo.log |grep --line-buffered something
Good luck.
Use awk(another great bash utility) instead of grep where you dont have the line buffered option! It will continuously stream your data from tail.
this is how you use grep
tail -f <file> | grep pattern
This is how you would use awk
tail -f <file> | awk '/pattern/{print $0}'
I have a Perlscript which does some logfile parsing and sometimes executes a bash command:
$messagePath = `ls -t -d -1 $dir | head -n 5 | xargs grep -l "$messageSearchString"\`;
I start my perl script like this ./perlscript.pl > logfile.log.
Now I do a tail on the logfile to watch the progress, but the output gets stuck every time at the line I described above.
The output will stop there for some seconds and then continue. ???
To profile the problem I wrapped it like this:
print `date`;
$messagePath = `ls -t -d -1 $dir | head -n 5 | xargs grep -l "$messageSearchString"`;
print `date`;
The output shows that the command does not consume a lot of time:
So 6. Okt 22:35:04 CEST 2013
So 6. Okt 22:35:04 CEST 2013
If I run the script without redirecting the output to a file there is no LAG.
Any idea why?
I haven't tried to duplicate your behaviour, but it might be a stdout buffering problem. Try with:
$| = 1;
$messagePath = `ls -t -d -1 $dir | head -n 5 | xargs grep -l "$messageSearchString"`;
Update
I have tried to duplicate the behaviour you observe: I've had to make some assumptions but I believe my suspicion was correct. Here I'm piping, but it's the same as redirecting to a file and tailing that file:
./test.pl | awk '{ print strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"), $0; }'
Without $| = 1, output is buffered and aggregated:
2013-10-06 23:08:27 Saluton, mondo: /home/lserni/test.sh
2013-10-06 23:08:27
2013-10-06 23:08:27 Waiting 10s...
2013-10-06 23:08:27 Saluton denove!
With the modification, each line is printed as it is generated:
2013-10-06 23:09:09 Saluton, mondo: /home/lserni/test.sh
2013-10-06 23:09:09
2013-10-06 23:09:09 Waiting 10s...
2013-10-06 23:09:19 Saluton denove!
I expect that your script is doing something that takes some seconds, and which is not generating that messagePath; and the output will be delayed until Perl has a sizeable chunk of data to send along, giving the impression that it's that line that's stalling.
I forgot: the timing pipe comes from here.
In situations like yours, I've had some success using the unbuffer command. It runs a command in an environment that looks to the command like it's outputting to a tty so it doesn't buffer its output. I don't know how to apply it exactly in your case, so if you want to try it, you will have to experiment a little.
I have a Linux driver running in the background that is able to return the current system data/stats. I view the data by running a console utility (let's call it dump-data) in a console. All data is dumped every time I run dump-data. The output of the utility is like below
Output:
- A=reading1
- B=reading2
- C=reading3
- D=reading4
- E=reading5
...
- variableX=readingX
...
The list of readings returned by the utility can be really long. Depending on the scenario, certain readings would be useful while everything else would be useless.
I need a way to grep only the useful readings whose names might have have nothing in common (via a bash script). I.e. Sometimes I'll need to collect A,D,E; and other times I'll need C,D,E.
I'm attempting to graph the readings over time to look for trends, so I can't run something like this:
# forgive my pseudocode
Loop
dump-data | grep A
dump-data | grep D
dump-data | grep E
End Loop
to collect A,D,E as that would actually give me readings from 3 separate calls of dump-data as that would not be accurate.
If you want to save all result of grep in the same file, you can just join all expressions in one:
grep -E 'expr1|expr2|expr3'
But if you want to have results (for expr1, expr2 and expr3) in separate files, things are getting more interesting.
You can do this using tee >(command).
For example, here I process the same pipe with thre different commands:
$ echo abc | tee >(sed s/a/_a_/ > file1) | tee >(sed s/b/_b_/ > file2) | sed s/c/_c_/ > file3
$ grep "" file[123]
file1:_a_bc
file2:a_b_c
file3:ab_c_
But the command seems to be too complex.
I would better save dump-data results to a file and then grep it.
TEMP=$(mktemp /tmp/dump-data-XXXXXXXX)
dump-data > ${TEMP}
grep A ${TEMP}
grep B ${TEMP}
grep C ${TEMP}
You can use dump-data | grep -E "A|D|E". Note the -E option of grep. Alternatively you could use egrep without the -E option.
you can simply use:
dump-data | grep -E 'A|D|E'
awk '/MY PATTERN/{print > "matches-"FILENAME;}' myfile{1,3}
thx Guru at Stack Exchange
I have 4 UART devices and I want to watch their output concurrently. I use the following script to do this job:
# first kill the cat process from last run
killall -v cat
for i in `seq 0 3`; do
cat /dev/crbif0rb0c$(i}ttyS0 | grep . --line-buffered &
# cat /dev/crbif0rb0c$(i)ttyS0 &
done
But I get no output from this script, except many empty lines. When I remove the grep stuff and use the second line in the for loop, I get a lot of outputs, but not readable since all outputs are messed up.
So my question is why there is no output (except empty lines) when I use grep? Or anyone can provide a better (and workable) solutions for my scenario?
Thanks in advance!
[UPDATE] I suddenly found that cat /dev/crbif0rb0c${i}ttyS0 | grep ^ --line-buffered & will work. Don't know why...
How about tail -f /dev/crbif0rb0c{0,1,2,3} ?
I have multiple piped commands, like this:
find [options] | grep [options] | xargs grep [options]
Each one of them can potentially produce errors (permissions errors, spaces-in-filenames errors, etc) that I am not interested in. So, I want to redirect all errors to /dev/null. I know I can do this with 2>/dev/null, for each command. Can I set IO redirection persistently? Ideally, I would just set it once, at the beginning/end of the command, and then it would affect all subsequent/preceding piped commands. Also, can IO redirection be set permanently, so that it continues to affect all commands until it is reset?
I'm using bash (I checked the man page for bash builtins and did not see the '>' and '<' characters at the top, so I assumed it was a linux thing... sorry)
I'm going to assume that you're using bash, or at least some sort of Bourne-like shell.
I'm also assuming that what you want to avoid is the following:
find ... 2>/dev/null | grep ... 2>/dev/null | xargs ... 2>/dev/null
i.e. repeating the 2>/dev/null part for each segment of the pipeline.
You can do that with:
( find ... | grep ... | xargs ... ) 2>/dev/null
You can also set the redirection permanently as follows:
exec 2>/dev/null
and (assuming that STDOUT and STDERR were both pointing to the same place before), you can undo that with:
exec 2>&1
Start a new shell with a redirected stderr, and run your pipeline in there?
Something like
$ bash 2>/dev/null -c "find [options] | grep [options] | xargs grep [options]"
It seems to work (i.e. no visible output) when I do
$ bash 2>/dev/null -c "echo nope 1>&2"
Of course, a side effect is that it is going to be tricky to understand what happened in the event of anything unexpected going on, but that's your business.