Software: convoy

about

I want to continuously monitor certain log files. But screen real estate is scarce and even if I had a screen as large as a wall I wouldn't be able to see all of it at the same time. But for many log messages all the details really don't matter, what I need is some kind of overview. Enter convoy. Convoy monitors a log file, finds certain patterns in log messages and plots colored lines on the screen instead of the original log messages. The messages are "encoded" in the color and the length of the line. This uses much less screen space than the original text messages.

status

A proof-of-concept implementation of convoy written in Perl using Perl/TK is available. This implementation can only monitor UUCP log files (yes, I am using UUCP...). I am using this as a test bed to try out different color schemes etc.

download

Download Perl code here: convoy. You will need the Tk module.

screen shot

This is a screen shot of convoy in action displaying a UUCP log file. Yellow lines are incoming messages, green lines are outgoing. Length of the line shows size of message. The lines in different shades of gray show the connection progress etc. Red lines denote errors.

future

The most important improvement would be some kind of generic engine to monitor different kinds of log files.

Next I have some other ideas about the format of the log display. Instead of lines this could use other shapes, scroll sideways instead of from bottom to top etc. Ideas welcome.

For a more detailed view of the log some kind of "zoom" function would be nice. If used on a part of the log it could show the original log file.

others

The program was partly inspired by the talk "An experimental tool for visual data mining" (Postscript) by Willem G. Knoop at SANE 2000.