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I have an rsyslog server running Ubuntu 12.04 which stores logs from different clients also running Ubuntu 12.04. Now I want to view those logs from my machine which also runs Ubuntu 12.04.

One way is to ssh to the server and view the logs using tail etc. but that's very tiring and not possible at all so isn't there any good opensource tool I can use to access those logs on my machine from the server it will be convenient if its a GUI application or a browser based one. Thanks.

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  • For the future, please DO NOT post what is essentially the same question after the first one has been placed on hold. Instead improve your original question. I have merged these for you.
    – voretaq7
    Oct 23, 2013 at 17:20

4 Answers 4

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In the trivial case, apache on the remote machine, with DocumentRoot set to /var/log.

Or if you want some kind of automagical transport, and you have ssh-agent set up correctly, try pointing a browser at sftp://remotemachine/var/log.

Edit: firstly, let's be clear about nomenclature. For the purposes of this question, as with X, I will define client and server as follows: the server is the machine from which you are viewing the logs, and the client is the machine on which the logs reside. This is because there may be many of the latter, but there is only one of the former.

If you only want server-side software, you have lots of choices but a transport problem; there is no magic service that you can install locally that somehow gives you file-system-level access to all the clients. The sftp URI is the easiest way I can find to provide that access automagically, and it will require you to do some work with keys and ssh-agent.

If you're willing to install software on each of the clients, that solves the transport problem. httpd on the clients is one easy way of doing it (since you specified server-side browser-based solutions), but there are many others (such as Anadi's suggestion of logstash). But you will need to indicate your willingness to install server on each client for us to explore this.

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  • Isn't there any software to accomplish this?
    – Tarun
    Oct 18, 2013 at 8:08
  • Client or server-side?
    – MadHatter
    Oct 18, 2013 at 8:38
  • client side so that I can access a remote server and view its logs
    – Tarun
    Oct 18, 2013 at 8:40
  • @Tarun There is LOTS of software designed to help you dig through a centralized log store, splunk being probably the best-known, however providing product and service recommendations is outside the scope of Server Fault -- You know your requirements better than we do, and you are just as capable of using Google as we are. If all you're looking for is "Get this product" (which is how this question and your comments appear to me) you're not likely to find what you want here.
    – voretaq7
    Oct 18, 2013 at 15:39
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Use Logstash instead , provides lot more features than tail or a simple browse over http.

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How about logstash? You didn't mention if you want to use shell, logstash is a web-based interface for searching and analysing the logs.

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  • logstash is a 'pipe on steroids' to deal with logs. Kibana is the awesome web gui that puts you in the drivers seat interrogating the logs after logstash pipes them into elasticsearch. Kibana is now a project of elasticsearch AND bundled with logstash's jar file so I guess I'm splitting hairs.
    – Dan Garthwaite
    Oct 23, 2013 at 19:37
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Loggly has a nice interface if you're looking for a browser-based solution. It's free if you have less than 200mb of logs a day. It works well with rsyslog.

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