UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Ok so i'm relatively new at UNIX and I'm trying to figure out how to make a log dump command.

My situation is a bit odd in that I'm always looking at customers boxes and as such I can't really do much to them. So everything I do in UNIX pretty much has to be a command I can type in by hand. I can't really install any apps to do things for me or anything like that since that required modifying the customers box. So I'm limited to software on the box now. We are freebsd with Bash.

So what I'm trying to do is make a command that will pull data for a specific date and time out of a bunch of different log files in different places. Then take all that information and dump it into a single log file that I can then save and look at. Which will be a big time saver for me. So that instead of having to manually dig my way through 10 log files I can just run one command and get all the data I need made into 1 file. Then I can dig through that.

I'm sure I could just do a great big long string of.. cat /folder/file | grep 'date' >> output file.

But that would require going through the entire command each time and adjust the date and time information which is going to change constantly. So I was hoping I could find a way to use variable somehow. So that I can write the command to look at variables to determine the date and time. This way all I have to do is adjust the variables to the date and time I want and the command will work. I suspect AWK can do this but really I'm just trying to figure out what kind of ideas and options I have for doing something like this.

I would appreciate any approaches to how I could accomplish this task.

---------- Post updated at 11:25 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:37 AM ----------

Ok so I can grep for variables which is good. And I've found how I can set the variables.

Code:

#testvariable='May'; testvariable2='june'

This will allow me to easily set any number of variables. Then I can simply grep the specific log files for date and time... Now the only snag i'm running into is I can't get multiple spaces into the date. In my logs the date is.

Apr 1

with 2 spaces not 1 and anytime I set the variable it always has 1 space. Any idea how I can get 2 spaces to work?

Code:

testvariable3='Apr  1'
grep "${testvariable3}" filename

Tried that no matter what I do it returns the variable with 1 space not 2.

Code:

#/var/log #testvariable=(Apr  2)      
#/var/log #echo $testvariable
Apr

#/var/log #testvariable=(Apr' ' ' '2)
#/var/log #echo $testvariable
Apr 2

#/var/log #testvariable=(Apr" "" "2)
#/var/log #echo $testvariable
Apr 2

#/var/log #testvariable='Apr'' ''2'
#/var/log #echo $testvariable
Apr 2
#/var/log #testvariable='Apr'' '" "'2'
#/var/log #echo $testvariable
Apr 2

---------- Post updated at 12:15 PM ---------- Previous update was at 11:45 AM ----------

Pretty much at this point this double space garbage is the only thing preventing me from getting what i want. Some of my logs are not retarded and the date is Mar 02 and some are stupid and its Mar 2 with 2 spaces.... I have go to figure out how to make it take the variable and put in two spaces.

your last post, looks like you are not following the examples given. you need to quote your echo commands... variables with spaces always require quoting.

Code:

testvariable3='Apr 1'

tark22@fmc1xx2rqf6d1 ~/
echo "$testvariable3"

### not this #/var/log #echo $testvariable  << notice  you have no quote around variable?

example below works fine:

Code:

$ testvariable3='Apr 1'

$ echo "$testvariable3"
Apr 1

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Sweetness!