lwatch(1)						      General Commands Manual							 lwatch(1)

NAME

       lwatch  -- syntax highlighting for syslog/syslog-ng file

SYNOPSIS

       lwatch  [-C  filename]	[--config  filename]   [-i  filename]	[--input filename]  [-o filename]  [--output filename]	[-sdOhv]  [--show-
       unparsed]  [--daemon]  [--omit-rc]  [--help]

DESCRIPTION

       Lwatch is a log colorizer. It reads syslog/syslog-ng data from named fifo or from stdin and displays colored logs into stdout.

       Lwatch is highly user-customizable. It reads configuration data from the file /etc/lwatch/lwatch.conf or (if given) from the file  provided
       with option -C

       The  way it works is simple. It reads a line from input (build-in default is /var/lib/lwatch/syslog.fifo), splits it into four parts: date,
       hostname, service name (with PID, if available) and real message. Each part has its own default color. You can redefine them in	configura-
       tion  file.  Default  colors  as  the same as in loco(1) [see: http://www.zjuul.net/~jules/loco/]. But lwatch is not only a static log col-
       orizer. It is something more. It can colorize your logs any way you wish. You are able to set a new color for any part  (date,  host,  ser-
       vice, message) using regexp based patterns.

COMMAND LINE OPTIONS

       Lwatch accepts some command line options. Command line options have precedence over values from configuration file.

       -C filename

       --config filename
		 read config from filename instead of /etc/lwatch/lwatch.conf

       -i filename

       --input filename
		 read data from named fifo filename instead of /var/lib/lwatch/syslog.fifo

       -o filename

       --output filename
		 write colored logs to filename instead stdout

       -s

       --show-unparsed
		 show unparsed lines like `last message repeated 5 times' or `--- MARK ---'

       -d

       --daemon  run as daemon, detach from control terminal, move to background

       -O

       --omit-rc do not read values from config file

       -h

       --help	 show help about runtime option

       -v

       --version show version and copyright notices

RUNNING

       Preferred way to run lwatch is to read syslog messages from named fifo or from standard input.

       If you use syslog you really want to read messages from named fifo.  To do it, put a line:

       *.*				   |/var/lib/lwatch/syslog.fifo

       in  your  syslog.conf. Create appropriate fifo and restart syslog, then run lwatch. You can also run lwatch before starting syslog.  If you
       don't know how to create named fifo see mknod(1) for details.

       Remember:

	  o  fifo must exist

	  o  proper name must be put in /etc/lwatch/lwatch.conf or given with -i command line option

       In syslog-ng you can run lwatch directly from syslog, i.e.:

       log { source(src); destination(console_all);};
       destination console_all {program("/usr/bin/lwatch -i- -o/dev/tty11"); };

       Lwatch does not support reading from regular files. If you really need this functionality use following command:

       tail -f /path/to/filename | /usr/bin/lwatch -i-
       It could be subject to change in the future.

RESOURCES

	  o  http://sf.net/projects/lwatch

	  o  http://freshmeat.net/projects/lwatch/

COPYRIGHT

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as  published	by
       the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       Regular	expression  support is provided by the PCRE library package, which is open source software, written by Philip Hazel, and copyright
       by the University of Cambridge, England. This library is available at: ftp://ftp.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/software/programming/pcre/

NOTE FROM AUTHOR

       I have written this tool for my own needs because perl tools, however flexible, eated a lot of memory and CPU.  I have found it useful  and
       I  share  it  with  the	Open Source Community. But still, developing of this software is driven by my own needs. So, you could expect next
       release in a year or two ;)

       It would be really nice if you could find some time and spare it for rating this project on FreshMeat (see RESOURCES). Comments are welcome
       too. I cannot promise that I will add new features to lwatch immediately but any positive feedback will raise my motivation level up.

       Thank you in advance for your time.

SEE ALSO

       lwatch.conf(5)

																	 lwatch(1)