How to tail -f the latest log file with a given pattern - linux

I work with some log system which creates a log file every hour, like follows:
SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-08
SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-09
SoftwareLog.2010-08-01-10
I'm trying to tail to follow the latest log file giving a pattern (e.g. SoftwareLog*) and I realize there's:
tail -F (tail --follow=name --retry)
but that only follow one specific name - and these have different names by date and hour. I tried something like:
tail --follow=name --retry SoftwareLog*(.om[1])
but the wildcard statement is resoved before it gets passed to tail and doesn't re-execute everytime tail retries.
Any suggestions?

I believe the simplest solution is as follows:
tail -f `ls -tr | tail -n 1`
Now, if your directory contains other log files like "SystemLog" and you only want the latest "SoftwareLog" file, then you would simply include a grep as follows:
tail -f `ls -tr | grep SoftwareLog | tail -n 1`

[Edit: after a quick googling for a tool]
You might want to try out multitail - http://www.vanheusden.com/multitail/
If you want to stick with Dennis Williamson's answer (and I've +1'ed him accordingly) here are the blanks filled in for you.
In your shell, run the following script (or it's zsh equivalent, I whipped this up in bash before I saw the zsh tag):
#!/bin/bash
TARGET_DIR="some/logfiles/"
SYMLINK_FILE="SoftwareLog.latest"
SYMLINK_PATH="$TARGET_DIR/$SYMLINK_FILE"
function getLastModifiedFile {
echo $(ls -t "$TARGET_DIR" | grep -v "$SYMLINK_FILE" | head -1)
}
function getCurrentlySymlinkedFile {
if [[ -h $SYMLINK_PATH ]]
then
echo $(ls -l $SYMLINK_PATH | awk '{print $NF}')
else
echo ""
fi
}
symlinkedFile=$(getCurrentlySymlinkedFile)
while true
do
sleep 10
lastModified=$(getLastModifiedFile)
if [[ $symlinkedFile != $lastModified ]]
then
ln -nsf $lastModified $SYMLINK_PATH
symlinkedFile=$lastModified
fi
done
Background that process using the normal method (again, I don't know zsh, so it might be different)...
./updateSymlink.sh 2>&1 > /dev/null
Then tail -F $SYMLINK_PATH so that the tail hands the changing of the symbolic link or a rotation of the file.
This is slightly convoluted, but I don't know of another way to do this with tail. If anyone else knows of a utility that handles this, then let them step forward because I'd love to see it myself too - applications like Jetty by default do logs this way and I always script up a symlinking script run on a cron to compensate for it.
[Edit: Removed an erroneous 'j' from the end of one of the lines. You also had a bad variable name "lastModifiedFile" didn't exist, the proper name that you set is "lastModified"]

I haven't tested this, but an approach that may work would be to run a background process that creates and updates a symlink to the latest log file and then you would tail -f (or tail -F) the symlink.

#!/bin/bash
PATTERN="$1"
# Try to make sure sub-shells exit when we do.
trap "kill -9 -- -$BASHPID" SIGINT SIGTERM EXIT
PID=0
OLD_FILES=""
while true; do
FILES="$(echo $PATTERN)"
if test "$FILES" != "$OLD_FILES"; then
if test "$PID" != "0"; then
kill $PID
PID=0
fi
if test "$FILES" != "$PATTERN" || test -f "$PATTERN"; then
tail --pid=$$ -n 0 -F $PATTERN &
PID=$!
fi
fi
OLD_FILES="$FILES"
sleep 1
done
Then run it as: tail.sh 'SoftwareLog*'
The script will lose some log lines if the logs are written to between checks. But at least it's a single script, with no symlinks required.

We have daily rotating log files as: /var/log/grails/customer-2020-01-03.log. To tail the latest one, the following command worked fine for me:
tail -f /var/log/grails/customer-`date +'%Y-%m-%d'`.log
(NOTE: no space after the + sign in the expression)
So, for you, the following should work (if you are in the same directory of the logs):
tail -f SoftwareLog.`date +'%Y-%m-%d-%H'`

I believe the easiest way is to use tail with ls and head, try something like this
tail -f `ls -t SoftwareLog* | head -1`

Related

Shell - iterate over content of file but do something only the first x lines

So guys,
I need your help trying to identify the fastest and the most "fault" tolerant solution to my problem.
I have a shell script which executes some functions, based on a txt file, in which I have a list of files.
The list can contain from 1 file to X files.
What I would like to do is iterate over the content of the file and execute my scripts for only 4 items out of the file.
Once the functions have been executed for these 4 files, go over to the next 4 .... and keep on doing so until all the files from the list have been "processed".
My code so far is as follows.
#!/bin/bash
number_of_files_in_folder=$(cat list.txt | wc -l)
max_number_of_files_to_process=4
Translated_files=/home/german_translated_files/
while IFS= read -r files
do
while [[ $number_of_files_in_folder -gt 0 ]]; do
i=1
while [[ $i -le $max_number_of_files_to_process ]]; do
my_first_function "$files" & # I execute my translation function for each file, as it can only perform 1 file per execution
find /home/german_translator/ -name '*.logs' -exec mv {} $Translated_files \; # As there will be several files generated, I have them copied to another folder
sed -i "/$files/d" list.txt # We remove the processed file from within our list.txt file.
my_second_function # Without parameters as it will process all the files copied at step 2.
done
# here, I want to have all the files processed and don't stop after the first iteration
done
done < list.txt
Unfortunately, as I am not quite good at shell scripting, I do not know how to structure it so that it won't waste any resources and mostly, to make sure that it "processes" everything from that file.
Do you have any advice on how to achieve what I am trying to achieve?
only 4 items out of the file. Once the functions have been executed for these 4 files, go over to the next 4
Seems to be quite easy with xargs.
your_function() {
echo "Do something with $1 $2 $3 $4"
}
export -f your_function
xargs -d '\n' -n 4 bash -c 'your_function "$#"' _ < list.txt
xargs -d '\n' for each line
-n 4 take for arguments
bash .... - run this command with 4 arguments
_ - the syntax is bash -c <script> $0 $1 $2 etc..., see man bash.
"$#" - forward arguments
export -f your_function - export your function to environment so child bash can pick it up.
I execute my translation function for each file
So you execute your translation function for each file, not for each 4 files. If the "translation function" is really for each file with no inter-file state, consider rather executing 4 processes in parallel with same code and just xargs -P 4.
If you have GNU Parallel it looks something like this:
doit() {
my_first_function "$1"
my_first_function "$2"
my_first_function "$3"
my_first_function "$4"
my_second_function "$1" "$2" "$3" "$4"
}
export -f doit
cat list.txt | parallel -n4 doit

Trying to make a live /proc/ reader using bash script for live process monitoring

Im trying to make a little side project script to sit and monitor all of the /proc/ directories, for the most part I have the concept running and it works(to a degree). What im aiming for here is to scan through all the files and cat their status files and pull out the appropriate info, and then I would like to run this process in an infinite loop to give me live updates of when something is running on and dropping off of the scheduler. Right now every time you run the script, it will print 50+ blank lines and every single time it hits the proper regex it will print it correctly, but Im aiming for it to not roll down the screen the way it does. Any help at all would be appreciated.
regex="[0-9]"
temp=""
for f in /proc/*; do
if [[ -d $f && $f =~ /proc/$regex ]]; then
output=$(cat $f/status | grep "^State") #> /dev/null
process_id=$(cut -b 7- <<< $f)
state=$(cut -b 10-19 <<< $output)
tabs 4
if [[ $state =~ "(running)" ]]; then
echo -e "$process_id:$state\n" | sort >> temp
fi
fi
done
cat temp
rm temp````
To get the PID and status of running all processes, try:
awk -F':[[:space:]]*' '/State:/{s=$2} /Pid:/{p=$2} ENDFILE{if (s~/running/) print p,s; p="X"; s="X"}' OFS=: /proc/*/status
To get this output updated every second:
while sleep 1; do awk -F':[[:space:]]*' '/State:/{s=$2} /Pid:/{p=$2} ENDFILE{if (s~/running/) print p,s; p="X"; s="X"}' OFS=: /proc/*/status; done

Linux: Tail -f multiple options

I want to add multiple tail scripts in one.
First one:
tail -f /var/script/log/script-log.txt | if grep -q "Text1"; then echo "0:$?:AAC32 ONLINE"
fi
I want to add 5 more lines with a diffrent word, is this possible?
else if, if etc. etc.
Thanks!
tail -f /var/script/log/script-log.txt | if grep -E "Text1|Text2|Text3"; then echo "0:$?:AAC32 ONLINE" fi
In your case it's enough to use logical AND operator:
tail -f /var/script/log/script-log.txt | grep -q "text1\|text2\|text3" && echo "0:$?:AAC32 ONLINE"
#!/bin/sh
PIPENAME="`mktemp -u "/tmp/something-XXXXXX"`"
mkfifo -m 600 "$PIPENAME"
tail -f /tmp/log.txt >"$PIPENAME" &
while read line < "$PIPENAME"
do
echo $line # Whatever you want goes here
done
rm -f "$PIPENAME"
If you want Bash specific, you can use the -u option for read, and then you can rm the named pipe before the loop starts, which is more guaranteed to leave things clean when you're done.

Bash Script output is always 'ps' when piping to grep from ps regardless of PID results

given an array of pids and the code:
for i in ${listedPids[#]}
do
runningCheck="ps -u $USER | grep $i"
grepRes=(${runningCheck})
if [[ -n $grepRes ]]
then
echo $grepRes
echo $runningCheck
... code not related to the issue
fi
done
Regardless if those pids are active or not; I keep getting 'ps' from echo $grepRes while the output of echo $runningCheck shows up with the correct user name and pid. What am I missing?
Replace
"ps -u $USER | grep $i"
by
$(ps -u $USER | grep $i)
Command Substitution: Bash performs the expansion by executing your command and replacing the command substitution with the standard output of the
command, with any trailing newlines deleted.
I simplified your script and here's what it should look like.
for i in "${listedPids[#]}"
do
grepRes=$(ps --no-heading -p $i)
if [[ -n "$grepRes" ]]
then
echo "$grepRes"
... code not related to the issue
fi
done
An even shorter code could be written using while loop.
ps --noheading -p "${listedPids[#]}" | while read grepRes
do
echo "$grepRes"
... code not related to the issue
done
As alvits and l0b0 pointed out, I made a few syntax errors: grepRes=(${runningCheck}) when I just wanted to execute that line and not turn it to a list, and the fact pipes and redirects don't work in variables. In the end pgrep did the job as I just needed to continue looping till all the background processes ended.
Maybe you could try eval.
runningCheck1="ps -u $USER"
runningCheck2=" | grep $i"
echo $runningCheck1$runningCheck
eval $runningCheck1$runningCheck2

How to get watch to run a bash script with quotes

I'm trying to have a lightweight memory profiler for the matlab jobs that are run on my machine. There is either one or zero matlab job instance, but its process id changes frequently (since it is actually called by another script).
So here is the bash script that I put together to log memory usage:
#!/bin/bash
pid=`ps aux | grep '[M]ATLAB' | awk '{print $2}'`
if [[ -n $pid ]]
then
\grep VmSize /proc/$pid/status
else
echo "no pid"
fi
when I run this script in bash like this:
./script.sh
it works fine, giving me the following result:
VmSize: 1289004 kB
which is exactly what I want.
Now, I want to run this periodically. So I run it with watch, like this:
watch ./script.sh
But in this case I only receive:
no pid
Please note that I know the matlab job is still running, because I can see it with the same pid on top, and besides, I know each matlab job take several hours to finish.
I'm pretty sure that something is wrong with the quotes I have when setting pid. I just can't figure out how to fix it. Anyone knows what I'm doing wrong?
PS.
In the man page of watch, it says that commands are executed by sh -c. I did run my script like sh -c ./script and it works just fine, but watch doesn't.
Why don't you use a loop with sleep command instead?
For example:
#!/bin/bash
pid=`ps aux | grep '[M]ATLAB' | awk '{print $2}'`
while [ "1" ]
do
if [[ -n $pid ]]
then
\grep VmSize /proc/$pid/status
else
echo "no pid"
fi
sleep 10
done
Here the script sleeps(waits) for 10 seconds. You can set the interval you need changing the sleep command. For example to make the script sleep for an hour use sleep 1h.
To exit the script press Ctrl - C
This
pid=`ps aux | grep '[M]ATLAB' | awk '{print $2}'`
could be changed to:
pid=$(pidof MATLAB)
I have no idea why it's not working in watch but you could use a cron job and make the script log to a file like so:
#!/bin/bash
pid=$(pidof MATLAB) # Just to follow previously given advice :)
if [[ -n $pid ]]
then
echo "$(date): $(\grep VmSize /proc/$pid/status)" >> logfile
else
echo "$(date): no pid" >> logfile
fi
You'd of course have to create logfile with touch.
You might try just running ps command in watch. I have had issues in the past with watch chopping lines and such when they get too long.
It can be fixed by making the terminal you are running the command from wider or changing the column like this (may need to adjust the 160 to your liking):
export COLUMNS=160;

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