LNAV -- The Logfile Navigator

The log file navigator, lnav, is an enhanced log file viewer that takes advantage of any semantic information that can be gleaned from the files being viewed, such as timestamps and log levels. Using this extra semantic information, lnav can do things like interleaving messages from different files, generate histograms of messages over time, and providing hotkeys for navigating through the file. It is hoped that these features will allow the user to quickly and efficiently zero in on problems.

Prerequisites

Lnav requires the following software packages:

• libpcre - The Perl Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) library.
• sqlite - The SQLite database engine.
• ncurses - The ncurses text UI library.
• readline - The readline line editing library.
• zlib - The zlib compression library.
• bz2 - The bzip2 compression library.

Installation

Lnav follows the usual GNU style for configuring and installing software:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Using

The only file installed is the executable, "lnav". You can execute it with no arguments to view the default set of files:

$ lnav

You can view all the syslog messages by running:

$ lnav /var/log/messages*

Screenshot

The following screenshot shows a syslog file. Log lines are displayed with highlights. Errors are red and warnings are yellow.

See Also

The lnav website can be found at:

http://lnav.org