---
name: "logtool"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "logtool"
version: "1.2.8-14"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/logtool"
---

# logtool(1)

parse and filter syslog files

## NAME

logtool - parse and filter syslog files

## SYNOPSIS

**(stdout) \| logtool -\[args\]**

Logtool is a command line program that will parse logfiles into a more palatable format.  It will take anything resembling a syslog or multilog file, as well as unformatted ASCII,  and crunch it into one of the following formats for your viewing pleasure:

- ANSI (colorized for easy "at a glance" viewing)

  - ASCII (e-mail reports/term's w/o color)

  - CSV (spreadsheet/database imports)

  - HTML (for generating web pages)

  - RAW (for no good reason)

  ## OPTIONS

- \-o \[ ANSI \| ASCII \| CSV \| HTML \| RAW \]

  Allows you to specify the output format to be one of the following: ANSI (default), ASCII, CSV, HTML, RAW.  Options are not case sensitive (ie: -o CSV and -o csv should yield the same results)

- \-t \[ long \| short \]

  Allows you to specify the time display format to be one of the following: (Long \[default\]) Mon Dy HH:MM:SS or (Short) HH:MM

- \-b

  Causes logtool to beep on RED events (ANSI output only).  This is usefull when you want to monitor a logfile on an ongoing basis, and wish to have your terminal beep whenever something out of the ordinary happens.

- \-s

  Causes logtool to not display the syslog "source" field

- \-p

  Causes logtool to not display the "program" field

- \-c \[/path/config.file\]

  Allows you to specify a config file other than the default /etc/logtool/logtool.conf

- \-i \[/path/includefile\]

  Allows you to specify an alterate file containing regex's for inclusion \[default=/etc/logtool/include\]

- \-e \[/path/excludefile\]

  Allows you to specify an alternate file containing regex's for exclusion \[default=/etc/logtool/exclude\]

- \-n

  Causes logtool to skip any attempts to resolve IP-\>Hostname by the various modules (handy when your DNS is down temporairly).

- \-v

  Set logtool to operate in verbose mode (does nothing currently)

- \-V

  Causes logtool to print it's version information and exit

- \-h

  Display the help message

## SUGGESTED USAGE(S)

- As a 'live' logfile monitoring tool:

  tail -f /var/log/messages \| logtool -o ANSI -b

- To generate colorized webpages of logfiles:

  cat /var/log/messages \| logtool -o HTML \> /home/httpd/html/logs/messages.html

- To generate reports via a cronjob:

  retail /var/log/messages \| logtool -o ASCII \| mail -s "Daily report" someuser@somedomain.ext

## CONFIG FILE

/etc/logtool/logtool.conf

The config file should be commented to the point of being self-documenting, so we will not comment very extensively on it here.  Suffice to say, this is the place where you should configure 99% of your runtime options for logtool.  You may also  have a collection of different default configurations,  and select amongst them by the '-c' option of logtool.

## AVAILABILITY

Logtool is known to compile/run on all UNIX flavors using a 2.95.x GNU C Compiler, the GNU Make utility, and a proper ANSI C library  (glibc is recommended, but not required).  Specific reports of success include FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, SunOS, AIX, SCO, and  of course, any known flavor of Linux (including at least 2 embedded system variants).

## SEE ALSO

[regex(7)](/regex/7.md) for help with constructing regular expressions for the include/exclude/colors files.  If you find no regex manual on your system, try 'apropos regex' and see what you get, or as a last ditch, 'man grep' should at least point you in the right direction.

You can also find a somewhat better bit of documentation in the textfile 'logtool.txt' (usually in the /usr/doc/, /usr/share/doc/ or similar tree on most Linux distributions).  If you don't know where to look, you can probably find it by typing 'locate logtool.txt' at the command line.

## AUTHOR

A.L.Lambert \<al@xjack.org\>