Parse::Syslog(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Parse::Syslog(3)NAMEParse::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:
syslog Traditional "syslog" (default)
metalog Metalog (see http://metalog.sourceforge.net/)
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
perl v5.18.2 2007-12-30 Parse::Syslog(3)
