Just started using it and love it

Notes, tips, and other usefull things on how to use LogMX

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anandhs
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:29 pm

Just started using it and love it

Post by anandhs »

Hi,

Great Tool! I like what I see so far and it has increased our ability to read log files. We intend to buy it, when do you think we can buy it, so we can use regular expressions? Also I think there are some features that would help us stick to this tool, here is a list

Sort logs by time
Being able to save the selected subset as a separate file.
Being able to combine multiple log files or search across log files


Good work!!

Thanks
Anand
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:30 pm

Post by admin »

Hello Anand,

Thank you, greatly appreciated.
The Professional version will be available on december 2007 or january 2008.

As for these new features:
Sort logs by time
LogMX does not currently sort entries by date since, generally, log files are written sequentially, so its data should always be sorted by date, naturally. Are your logs not sorted by date? If not, this feature could be implemented in a next release.

Being able to save the selected subset as a separate file
Professional version is able to export a file or a subset of this file (selected, displayed, or found entries) to a CSV file. Other formats like XML or HTML could be easilly implemented, but preserving original file format would be more complicated (LogMX can read any format through pluggable parsers but is not able to write files using this format)

Being able to combine multiple log files or search across log files
Sure! We are currently working on this feature, it will be available in v1.1.1 (coming within a few weeks). User will be able to merge any set of files (using already opened files or when opening several files at the same time). By "merge", I mean only in LogMX display, not if filesystem (but you can then export this merged view to a file)

Regards,
Xavier.
anandhs
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:29 pm

Post by anandhs »

I have a need to look at log files from multiple sources. Each is time sorted, but once merged I need something that will sort by time.

Would the merge feature show the final merged file in chronological order?

I think exporting as csv would also work.

Thanks
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:30 pm

Post by admin »

Yes, you will be able to merge files using two merge types: "interlaced" (sort by date) and "group by file" (no sort, just append files)

Xavier.
isheedm
Posts: 109
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:16 pm

Side-by-side merge?

Post by isheedm »

I'd like to view 3 different log files from different servers and see them in 3 columns of a table with all sorted by timestamp. This would help visualize the interaction of several servers and when things happen relative to each other. Empty rows could be inserted for timestamps not common across all files:

For example:

Code: Select all

| log1    | log2    | log3    |
| msg 1.1 | -----   | ----    |
| msg 1.2 | -----   | ----    |
| ----    | msg 2.1 | msg 3.1 |
| -----   | msg 2.2 | ---     |
| msg 1.3 | ------- | msg 3.2 |
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:30 pm

Post by admin »

OK, isheedm, it seems to be a good idea to correlate events produced on different files/servers. We are currently implementing the new "Merge" feature and we will try to allow this.

Xavier
isheedm
Posts: 109
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:16 pm

Cool

Post by isheedm »

Thanks for the reply. My example used "3", but that could be any number of files between 2 & 3 for my case.
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:30 pm

Post by admin »

OK.
I guess that in your example, "msg 2.1" and "msg 3.1" appeared at the same time: what do you think about having a tunable 'delta-t' so that user can tell what he considers to be 'at the same time'.
For example, merging with delta-t = 500ms will display entries on the same line if their timestamp are 'separated' with less than 500ms.
isheedm
Posts: 109
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2007 2:16 pm

Post by isheedm »

That is a good idea on delta time. The "sync" only works well if the clocks across systems are synchronized.

I just checked a couple of candidate machines in my company and their clocks were off by 2 minutes from each other. I could either set the delta time to 2 minutes, or you could provide a way to subtract 2 minutes from server #2 as it's tasks come in to help it meet the tighter "delta" time...
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 555
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 10:30 pm

Post by admin »

LogMX v1.1.1 released today includes this new "Merge File" feature.

You can merge files:
* coming from SCP or local hard drives
* that are already opened or not
* by sorting entries by date (interlaced) or by simply appending files

You can use this feature with "File" > "Open" and/or "Tools" > "Merge".
File sets are automatically stored in "File" > "Recent files" (using URLs like merge://file1;file2)

As for the feature that allows entries appeared at the same time to be displayed on the same row (isheedm post), it will be implemented in v1.1.2 as the new "Correlation by date" feature.
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