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I would to generate a daily activity report for production Linux Servers. I could quite easily do this using shell scripts and scripting but I would just like to know if there is a class of tools that already do this. I seem to remember something that did this for logs.

I am interested in seeing which logs are being written. If new or unusual messages are being written to the logs.

How much the disk space has changed in the last 24 hours, where are the major changes. which folders are growing in diskspace. i.e. unrotated logs or undeleted temporary files.

What has been installed in the last 24 hours.

What processes are new and what is no longer running. What processes are leaking memory.

I'd like intelligent summaries of the information. i.e. if a bazillion new files have been created, I don't need see to all their names.

I'd like the report to be plain text and HTML and for it to be optionally mailed out to an admin.

Please let me know if this already exists and any ideas for what should be in a good daily report.

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My linux servers already email me a daily report. Look for a program called "logwatch".

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    The best part is that Logwatch is highly modular and you could always write your own scripts to extend the functionality to additional logs you wish to watch.
    – Ophidian
    Oct 3, 2009 at 14:22
  • Yes, logwatch is what I had encountered before. Will it discover application logs? Oct 3, 2009 at 14:34
  • It's pluggable - you can define a log file location and what you want it to look for in that log file. Oct 3, 2009 at 15:15
  • as pointed out, "logwatch" is what youre looking for. it usually is used along with "logrotate", which you might also want to check. it handles log file rotation/compression, preventing them to grow into infinity. Nov 30, 2012 at 18:25

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