Java Log Viewer [closed]

Question

Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to debug a program is by going through its long log files.

I searched for a decent log viewer for a while now, and haven't found a real solution. The only program that seemed to be most appropriate was Chainsaw with its Socket connector but after a few short uses the program proved to be buggy and unresponsive at best.

For my purposes, a log viewer should at least be able to mark log levels (for example with different colors) and perform easy filtering based on packages and free-text.

Is there any other (free) log viewer? I'm looking for anything that could work well with log4j.

Answer 1

Take a look to http://jlogviewer.sourceforge.net/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/jlogviewer/ Java log viewer is lightweight GUI to easily view the java application logs generated by the "java.util.logging" package. It's open source!!

Answer 2

Depending on what platform you are running on and what other log viewing tools you have available, you can just use the appropriate log4j appender (syslog, Windows Event Logger) and just use your platform log viewing tools.

Other than that I have usually seen custom solutions developed.

Something that will drive your solution is what your overall system is like. Are you trying to aggregate logs from several computers? Or just view the logs from a single remote process?

Answer 3

You can use MindTree Insight, it is open source, efficient, and specific for that use case : analyze log4j files.

Answer 4

I'm using OtrosLogViewer. You can mark log events manually or using string/regular expression. You can filter events based on level, time thread, string or regular expression. Logs can be imported by listening on socket or connecting to Log4j SocketHubAppender

You can take a look at Youtube video or screenshots:

Disclaimer: I am the author of OtrosLogViewer

Answer 5

Just wanted to say that I've finally found a tool that I can get along with just fine...

It's called LogExpert (see http://www.log-expert.de/) and is free. Besides the usual tail function, it also has a filter and a search function - two crucial things that are missing from BareTail. And if you happen to want to customize the way it parses columns further, it's dead simple. Just implement an interface in .NET and you're done (and I'm a Java/Flex programmer...)

Answer 6

I've rolled out Splunk (http://www.splunk.com/) for log viewing and searching with great success. The free version can be used locally and the paid version can collect all your logs into one location. We use it mostly for Log4J logs but with lots of other formats as well.

Beyond tail and grep support (without needing to know grep...) it automatically indexes logs and allows easy analysis (e.g. # of events in last xx timeframe) as well as basic charting, alerting, and event aggregation.

I won't say that the app is perfect or that the company has matured yet. But I don't hesitate at all to recommend that you try it.