In looking for an app to view logs that doesn’t require a lot of overhead, I stumbled upon Logwatch. After running it through it’s paces, it seems to be pretty capable from docker, fail2ban, to sys logs.
I got to wondering if there are other such log viewers I could try that are in the same genre. Logwatch doesn’t greate pretty graphics and dialed out dashboards, but it’s fairly quick, I can view from a range of dates and times, and a variety of logs.
I checked out GoAcces, but it seemed geared towards web related logs like webpage hits, etc. With other options requiring elastisearch, databases, etc, they just seemed heavy for my application.
Anyone have any suggestions. So far, Logwatch does what it says on the tin, but I’m curious what others have tried or still use.
ETA: Thanks all for the recommends. I’m still going over a couple of them, but lnav seems like what I’m looking for.
Can you clarify what your concern is with “heavy” logging solutions that require database/elasticsearch? If you’re worried about system resources that’s one thing, but if it’s just that it seems “complicated,” I have a docker compose file that handles Graylog, Opensearch, and Mongodb. Just give it a couple of persistent storage volumes, and it’s good to go. You can send logs directly to it with syslog or gelf, or set up a filebeat container to ingest file logs.
There’s a LOT you can do with it once you’ve got your logs into the system, but you don’t NEED to do anything else. Just something to consider!
My thoughts were that, even tho I know Graylog, et al are fantastic apps, if I could get away with something light, like Logwatch and lnav, that would allow me to read logs fairly easy and lighter on resources, I could channel those resources to other projects. I’m working from a remote VPS with 32 gb RAM, so yes I can run the big apps, and I know just enough about Docker so that it’s not way over my head as far as complicated. This particular VPS has only one user, so I’m not generating tons of user logs etc. IDK, it all made sense when I was thinking about it. LOL I do like a nice, dialed out UI tho.
I certainly would like the opportunity to take a look at it, maybe run it on my test server and see how it does.
'presh
Here you go. I commented out what is not necessary. There are some passwords noted that you’ll want to set to your own values. Also, pay attention to the volume mappings… I left my values in there, but you’ll almost certainly need to change those to make sense for your host system. Hopefully this is helpful!
services: mongodb: image: "mongo:6.0" volumes: - "/mnt/user/appdata/mongo-graylog:/data/db" # - "/mnt/user/backup/mongodb:/backup" restart: "on-failure" # logging: # driver: "gelf" # options: # gelf-address: "udp://10.9.8.7:12201" # tag: "mongodb" opensearch: image: "opensearchproject/opensearch:2.13.0" environment: - "OPENSEARCH_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms1g -Xmx1g" - "bootstrap.memory_lock=true" - "discovery.type=single-node" - "action.auto_create_index=false" - "plugins.security.ssl.http.enabled=false" - "plugins.security.disabled=true" - "OPENSEARCH_INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD=[yourpasswordhere]" ulimits: nofile: 64000 memlock: hard: -1 soft: -1 volumes: - "/mnt/user/appdata/opensearch-graylog:/usr/share/opensearch/data" restart: "on-failure" # logging: # driver: "gelf" # options: # gelf-address: "udp://10.9.8.7:12201" # tag: "opensearch" graylog: image: "graylog/graylog:6.2.0" depends_on: opensearch: condition: "service_started" mongodb: condition: "service_started" entrypoint: "/usr/bin/tini -- wait-for-it opensearch:9200 -- /docker-entrypoint.sh" environment: GRAYLOG_TIMEZONE: "America/Los_Angeles" TZ: "America/Los_Angeles" GRAYLOG_ROOT_TIMEZONE: "America/Los_Angeles" GRAYLOG_NODE_ID_FILE: "/usr/share/graylog/data/config/node-id" GRAYLOG_PASSWORD_SECRET: "[anotherpasswordhere]" GRAYLOG_ROOT_PASSWORD_SHA2: "[aSHA2passwordhash]" GRAYLOG_HTTP_BIND_ADDRESS: "0.0.0.0:9000" GRAYLOG_HTTP_EXTERNAL_URI: "http://localhost:9000/" GRAYLOG_ELASTICSEARCH_HOSTS: "http://opensearch:9200/" GRAYLOG_MONGODB_URI: "mongodb://mongodb:27017/graylog" ports: - "5044:5044/tcp" # Beats - "5140:5140/udp" # Syslog - "5140:5140/tcp" # Syslog - "5141:5141/udp" # Syslog - dd-wrt - "5555:5555/tcp" # RAW TCP - "5555:5555/udp" # RAW UDP - "9000:9000/tcp" # Server API - "12201:12201/tcp" # GELF TCP - "12201:12201/udp" # GELF UDP - "10000:10000/tcp" # Custom TCP port - "10000:10000/udp" # Custom UDP port - "13301:13301/tcp" # Forwarder data - "13302:13302/tcp" # Forwarder config volumes: - "/mnt/user/appdata/graylog/data:/usr/share/graylog/data/data" - "/mnt/user/appdata/graylog/journal:/usr/share/graylog/data/journal" - "/mnt/user/appdata/graylog/etc:/etc/graylog" restart: "on-failure" volumes: mongodb_data: os_data: graylog_data: graylog_journal:
Dude! Thanks so much. You’re very generous with your time. I guess now I have no choice nor excuse. I’ll run it up the flag pole sometime this weekend,
My pleasure! Getting this stuff together can be a pain, so I’m always trying to pay it forward. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!