---
name: "ccze"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "ccze"
version: "0.2.1-8"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/ccze"
---

# ccze(1)

A robust log colorizer

## NAME

ccze - A robust log colorizer

## SYNOPSIS

**ccze** \[*options*\] \<*logfile*

## DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents briefly the **ccze** utility, which is a drop-in replacement for **colorize**, but written in C, to be faster and less resource-hungry. The goal was to be fully backwards compatible, yet superior with respect to speed and features.

## OPTIONS

These programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (\`-'). A summary of options is included below.

- **-a, --argument *PLUGIN=ARGUMENTS***

  Use this option to pass *ARGUMENTS* to the specified *PLUGIN*. The argument list is whitespace separated.

- **-A, --raw-ansi**

  If one wants to enable raw ANSI color sequences instead of using curses, this option does just that.

- **-c, --color *KEY=COLOR***

  Set the color of the keyword *KEY* to *COLOR*, like one would do in one of the configuration files.

- **-C, --convert-date**

  Convert unix timestamp to readable date format (in oops and squid logs, for example).

- **-F, --rcfile *rcfile***

  Read *rcfile* as a configuration file upon startup, instead of the default ones.

- **-h, --html**

  Instead of colorising the input onto the console, output it in HTML format instead.

- **-l, --list-plugins**

  List all available (loaded) plugins, along with their type and a short description.

- **-m, --mode *mode***

  Change the output mode. Available modes are *curses*, *ansi* and *html*.

- **-o, --options *OPTIONS...***

  **CCZE** is able to toggle some of its features with this option. You can toggle the *scroll*, *wordcolor*, *lookups*, and *transparent* features, or you can fiddle with *cssfile*. All of these are enabled by default, except *cssfile*. One can turn them off by prefixing the option with a "no".

  With *scroll*, one can enable or disable scrolling. If the output is not redirected, it is wise to leave it enabled.

  The *wordcolor* option makes **ccze** search for different keywords in unparsed input, and color those too. Since it is quite fast, and makes the output look better, it is recommended to leave this enabled.

  However, *lookups* is an option that might be better to disable. When on, **ccze** will try to look up usernames, service names, and lots of other stuff, which will slow down coloring a great deal. If one is piping a long log through **ccze**, this option might be turned off to speed up the process.

  With the *transparent* option, one can make CCZE treat black background colors as transparent - that means, a black background will appear transparent in a similar X terminal. If turned off, it will appear as black.

  If *cssfile* is set, then CCZE will not inline the Cascading Style Sheet information into the outputted HTML, but include a link to the external stylesheet given in this parameter.

- **-p, --plugin *PLUGIN***

  While the default action is to load all plugins (see the **Plugins** section below), when this option is present, only the specified plugins will be loaded. If one knows what kind of log will be piped through **ccze**, using this option may result in a slight speedup.

- **-r, --remove-facility**

  Syslog-ng puts the facility level before log messages. With this switch, these can be cut off.

- **--help**

  Show summary of options and exit.

- **-V, --version**

  Show version of program.

## PLUGINS

Different programs have different kind of logs, and every kind of log **ccze** supports is implemented via a plug-in. They are by default located under */usr/lib/x86\_64-linux-gnu/ccze* and *$HOME/.ccze* (so they can be overridden by the user easily).

At the moment, the following modules are bundled with the official release:

- *apm*

  For coloring apmd's logs.

- *distcc*

  For coloring distccd's logs. (See [*distccd*(1)](/distccd/1.md))

- *exim*

  For coloring exim's *main.log*. (See [*exim*(8)](/exim/8.md))

- *fetchmail*

  For coloring fetchmail's log files. (See [*fetchmail*(1)](/fetchmail/1.md))

- *ftpstats*

  For coloring ftpStats compatible log files, such as Pure-FTPD's *Stats* log format.

- *httpd*

  For coloring apache-style *access.log* and *error.log* files. (See [*apache*(8)](/apache/8.md))

  As a side-effect, all compatible formats, like [*pure-ftpd*(8)](/pure-ftpd/8.md)'s common-log format is also supported by this plugin.

- *icecast*

  For coloring *icecast/icecast.log* and *icecast/usage.log* files. (See [*icecast*(8)](/icecast/8.md))

- *oops*

  For coloring *oops/oops.log* files.

- *php*

  For coloring *php.log* files.

- *postfix*

  For coloring postfix logs. (See [*postfix*(1)](/postfix/1.md))

- *procmail*

  For coloring procmail's log file. (See [*procmail*(1)](/procmail/1.md))

- *proftpd*

  For coloring proftpd's *access.log* and *auth.log* files. (See [*proftpd*(8)](/proftpd/8.md))

- *squid*

  For coloring squid's *access.log*, *store.log* and *cache.log* files. (See [*squid*(8)](/squid/8.md))

- *sulog*

  For coloring *sulog* files. (See [*su*(1)](/su/1.md))

- *super*

  For coloring *super.log* files. (See [*super*(1)](/super/1.md))

- *syslog*

  For coloring generic syslog messages. (See [*syslogd*(8)](/syslogd/8.md))

- *ulogd*

  For coloring ulogd logs.

- *vsftpd*

  For coloring *vsftpd.log* files. (See [*vsftpd*(8)](/vsftpd/8.md))

- *xferlog*

  For coloring *xferlog* files. (See [*xferlog*(5)](/xferlog/5.md))

## FILES

- */etc/colorizerc*, *$HOME/.colorizerc*

  These files are the default configuration files for **colorize**, and are parsed by **ccze** for the sake of full compatibility.

  */etc/cczerc*, *$HOME/.cczerc*

  This two are the main configuration files, in which one can change the colors used by the program to his liking. See the comments in the beginning of */etc/cczerc* for a description on the files' structure.

  If neither of these files exist on your system, consider using the **ccze-dump** utility in the source tree, which dumps the default color set to standard output.

## SEE ALSO

[**colorize**(1)](/colorize/1.md)

## AUTHOR

ccze was written by Gergely Nagy \<algernon@bonehunter.rulez.org\>, based on colorize by Istvan Karaszi \<colorize@spam.raszi.hu\>.