ctail: The cluster tail tool

ctail is a tool for operating tail(1) across large clusters of machines, with many log files. It relies upon existing SSH authentication infrastructure, rather than introducing central points of log collection, or other large infrastructure changes, which aren't easily changed in many systems.

ctail is built on top of APR and APR-Util. It is made available under the Apache Software License, Version 2.0, which means it is suitable for use in both open and closed source software, and that you can make modifications to it without being required to distribute them, as long as you abide by the terms set forth in the license. Although, if you do fix bugs or add new features it would certainly be nice if you contributed them back, helping development.

Downloads

ctail depends on at least APR and APR-Util version 1.1 in order to function. Most operating systems have packages available for this or a newer version. The Apache HTTP Server 2.2 also includes a new enough version, if you do not have it installed separately.

ctail also requires tail to be installed on the target machines, and ssh on the source machine. ctail has currently only been tested with OpenSSH

The currently stable version of ctail is 0.1.0.

Unix Source:

ctail-0.1.0.tar.bz2

[PGP]

[MD5]

All releases are PGP signed by Paul Querna <pquerna@apache.org>. More information on verifying downloads can be found on the Apache HTTP Server Website.

Examples

ctail --help:

ctail 0.1.0-release
Usage: 
   ctail (options)
Options:
   -b --bulk                    Enable Bulk IO Buffering for output.
   -d --debug                   Enable debug output.
   -h --help                    Print this help message.
   -f --file=<path>       Sets default target file to tail
   -m --machines=<list>   List of machines to connect to.
   -p --prefix                  Show machine names before every line.

The --machines option lists the machines for ctail to connect to. Machines can either be bare hostnames, or hostnames plus a log path.

ctail assumes that your SSH is configured to work without prompting for passwords or other information. You can test this by running ssh -o BatchMode=yes machine_name. This is most commonly done using ssh-keys, but more information on how to use Password-less authentication can be found on the internet.

ctail -m "w01:/var/log/messages" Would connect to the machine w01, and tail the file /var/log/messages

ctail -m "w01" -f /var/log/messages Would result in the same operations as the previous command, since the file path is ommited in the machine list, but the default is set with -f

ctail -m "w01 w02 w03 w04 w05" -f /var/log/httpd/access_Log To tail files on multiple machines, just put spaces in the -m parameter. -m can also be passed multiple times.

ctail -m "w01 w02 w03 w04 w05 s01:/var/log/messages" -f /var/log/httpd/access_Log It is also possible to mix and match default log paths, with log paths for an individual host.

svn co http://svn.i-want-a-pony.com/repos/clustertail/trunk/ ctail