chrysn / pygtail

Pygtail reads log file lines that have not been read. It will even handle log files that have been rotated. Based on logcheck's logtail2 (http://logcheck.org)

pygtail

A python "port" of logcheck's logtail2.

Pygtail reads log file lines that have not been read. It will even handle log files that have been rotated.

Usage

From the command line:

Usage: pygtail.py [options] logfile

Print log file lines that have not been read.

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OFFSET_FILE, --offset-file=OFFSET_FILE
                        File to which offset data is written (default:
                        <logfile>.offset).
  -p, --paranoid        Update the offset file every time we read a line 
                        (as opposed to only when we reach the end of the
                        file).
  -f, --follow          Do not exit at the end of the file, but wait for
                        new lines to be written.

In your code:

from pygtail import Pygtail

for line in Pygtail("some.log"):
    sys.stdout.write(line)

Notes

Pygtail does not handle rotated logs that have been compressed. You should configure your log rotation script so that the most recently rotated log is left uncompressed (logrotated, for example, has a delaycompress option that does just that).

The "following" feature is implemented using one-second sleeps, as it was the case with tail -f before coreutils 7.5. An extension to inotify would be nice.

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