[hobbit] hobbitclient + msgs test sugesstion

[Rich Smrcina]

Doesn't the current bb implementation only monitor log file messages 
issued during a time period just past (like 30 minutes)?

I like the expression matching idea, but repetitively walking through 
the whole thing could introduce alot of overhead.  It would be 
beneficial walk backward from the end of the file to a pre-configured 
point in the past, then scan the messages.  Sorry if this is obvious... :)

Henrik Stoerner wrote:
> Hi Peter (and anyone else interested),
> 
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 08:26:14PM +0100, Peter Welter wrote:
> 
>>Since the msgs-check is not available yet in the Hobbit display, I
>>want to make a suggestion to have it enabled relatively easy. I think
>>of two methods:
>>
>>-1- A client must have read access to the file [client picks out the
>>    "interesting" bits]
>>
>>-2- Your Hobbit server must _also_ be a central loghost. [allows
>>    centralized configuration of how to monitor the logs]
> 
> 
> I'm not really thrilled with either of these - sorry! Each of them
> have some drawbacks: The first one moves the configuration of what
> logs to monitor away from the central hobbit server, and the 
> second one only works for logs that go through the syslog interface.
> If I want to monitor e.g. an Apache webserver error-log, or the
> custom logs from a BEA server, solution 2) won't work. I dont see
> how it can work with logs from a Windows server either. Plus it
> adds load to the central Hobbit server to deal with all of the
> logfiles.
> 
> So - I think some other solution is needed, and I've been thinking
> about how to do it. So far it's just ideas - no code. But I believe
> the log checking has to happen on each client, but controlled by
> a central configuration. So what I plan to implement is something
> like this:
> 
> * The configuration of what logs to monitor and what strings to
>   look for is maintained on the central Hobbit server, either as
>   an addition to the hobbit-clients.cfg file, or in a separate
>   file - that isn't really important.
> * When a client connects and sends in a client-side message, the
>   Hobbit server accepts the client message, but also sends back
>   the current log-check configuration info. By re-using the
>   client connection, the overhead involved in pushing the 
>   configuration to each client becomes almost nil.
> * When the client has a log-check configuration, it knows what logs
>   to check for what strings, and can include that information in
>   the normal client message it sends back to the Hobbit server.
>   That means the client will need a tool to do the logfile checking;
>   probably using a client-side regular-expression matching tool
>   like "grep". It can either be built into the Hobbit client, or
>   it could just rely on the existing "grep" utility found on the
>   system - this would probably be the simplest to implement.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Henrik
> 
> 
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> 
> 

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Rich Smrcina
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