Hi everyone,

I have spent a couple of days developing a program in awk to help me parse and read log files in a format which is much easier to read than the usual gibberish that appears on the screen. Through the shell that is.

It dawned on me today that some hosters might be interested in helping their clients have a more enjoyable experience reading their logs (resulting in less support calls) and that I might be able to generate some free traffic to my site.

I would custom tailor the program to nicely output and print to the screen the log files of each hoster and explain things about the logs to clients on a web page with the look and feel of each hosters main web site.

All I would ask in return would be that a link to my web site be included very appropriately at the bottom of the web page which describes the program and how to use it. My site deals with helping relatively unexperienced people to use Internet technologies to build their internet presence. Here is a link to my site if you want to see it though IT IS NOT YET OPERATIONAL http://www.internetsuccess.ca/tools.html (link is as yet unpublished and unpublicized).

I would do the work of tailoring the program I created to a hoster's log file format and writing up a client help page on it's use and customization along with information on the types of data found in log files and a hoster would benefit in providing something very nice for their shell customers to use. Free.

My program can leave out virus log entries so that they don't clutter the ouput. It can leave out log entries for the IP of the person using it. It can ouput as many or as few lines as desired from the tail of the log files. It can unzip, zipped log files and put them together with unzipped ones before outputting the desired number of lines. It can output debug information showing the fields that awk splits the log file into for every record in the log files. It can be modified to produce color output.

If any hoster is interested please send me a private message and I will upload what the program output looks like through my web site. Compared to the normal output available when looking at log files with cat and other such unix utilities.

Any input on whether this might be worth pursuing would be very appreciated.

Thanks.

Carlos

Hmm... this is advertising... which belongs elseswhere.

Hmmm... since he seems to be offering it for free I don't think the mods will move it. But how do we know how a Chicken thinks? ;)

If I could get a demo, I might be intersted....


But, JTY is right, this is the wrong forum...

Considering that I am making no money from this program and am not even set up to accept it even if someone wanted to pay me for it how can this be considered advertising?

I am asking for input on whether this might be worth pursuing as an avenue to help hosters and generate some traffic for my site. No more and no less. It's a way of increasing traffic. Not making money through advertising something to sell.

Is this a viable win/win for me and hosters?

I am not cloaking a money maker under the guise of getting input either. I am genuinely interested in whether this might be something to pursue. I don't really know.

Be that as it may if this is indeed considered advertising then please accept my apologies for posting on this forum.

Can you suggest a different forum where I might be able to get the input of web hosters or others on this idea?

Thanks.

Carlos

I think (and I could be way off here) that any time you post something that links to your business in any way it needs to go into the "related offers and requests" area, otherwise it's deemed self-promotion.

I think self-advertisement is pretty much frowned upon in the non-advert forums...

If you look down the forum list, to the last forum...

Related Offers and Requests, you can post this kind of thread there...

If you want, you can use the Report link in your post and ask for it to be moved..

I went ahead and asked that this thread be moved to a more appropriate forum. Thanks for the input even though I didn't and still don't consider this advertising. But I want to respect the consensus on what is advertising or not.

The very idea of a forum in my mind is a place where one can exchange ideas, get questions answered, and get input on potential ideas related to the subject of the forum. Whether that idea will lead to self-promotion or not when it is just an idea it is just that.

If expressing or asking for input on an idea that *might* and I say *might* result in a benefit to me or my site is considered advertising I wonder if we are going overboard in trying to keep advertisers from running over us with their messages.

Just my two cents worth.

Carlos

Hmmm... I seem to remember a few times Chicken posting and asking if the software was "free" or not, and not moving it if so. I guess this kind of thing should really be addressed.


Participants may not use the forum to publish or discuss any information regarding their product or services, or future (possible) products or services, or any product or services they are, or have been, associated with. This includes, but not limit to suggesting your own services, or services of partners or family.


Considering I seem to be seeing a lot of PerlDesk type setups (the code is free, the support costs money), I think perhaps a mod should post something explaining whether this applies to EVERYTHING or commerical gain only. Though it seems by the rule that it means any self-promotion, I've seen many threads that self-promote GPL software, that don't get moved :confused:

Ok... So wrong forum business pretty much taken care of...

Whats the info of your product? How does it phrase the logs? C? Perl? PHP? TCL?

Are there screenshots? A demo?

I very well would be interested in something like this, but just need the background info on it first...

Let me work up some screen shots, post them on a page on my site, and I will post a link back here (if that's okay). It might take me a day or two.

The program is written entirely in awk though I currently use it in conjunction with gunzip and cat. Together to do the work.

Gunzip unzips files.

Cat combines unzipped log files with the gunzip unzipped ones.

My awk program takes the result, applies some rules to it (like no IP or virus log entries to be output), and then spits out a tail number of lines to the screen. Nicely formatted with certain sections in color or underlined to my liking.

At the shell I just type "elog" to see a default number of lines from the combined zipped and unzipped error log files. Or "elog x" to see x number of lines other than the default of 50. I can change the default for all my log reading scripts by setting an alias in my bash start up file to a different number.

I type "ilog" to see transfer logs.
I type "alog" to see agent logs.
I type "rlog" to see referrer logs (unix rlog utility rendered uncallable by this name).

I could go into more detail but I will work up something and post a link to it so you can see it better.

I am still not sure I want to do this because it might involve a lot of free work of me for some measly traffic but once my page is up we will see if it's worth discussing further.

Thanks.

Carlos

I'm in a good mood, so this got moved to the correct forum instead of being deleted... ;)

Ask away.

Thanks for moving this thread to a new forum BC.

If anyone is interested in knowing more and seeing some screen captures you can go to...

http://www.internetsuccess.ca/g/log_program.html

Carlos

Hi, I took a look at your log program's screen shot and it doesn't look too newbie-friendly and it doesn't provide them with any addition information besides reformatting the log text. Maybe it'd help if you put some stuff such as: User's IP [IP here], Came From: [location, Wanted: [action], time, etc.

isnt much different than cat access_log | grep -v whatever

i guess if its free i'd give it a try
otherwise no way

Thanks for everyone's input.

Just a few other thoughts on some of the comments made.

The log scripts I wrote definitely produce output that is much more user friendly than just ....

cat access_log | grep -v <what you don't want to see>

The difference between access log output through my program and just "cat"ing the result is not as noticeable as when viewing transfer or error logs.

Regardless I would focus on helping clients know their log files and use them the most effectively possible in terms of a quick see (not as in a full blown log analysis program). Which would relieve hosters of having to teach their customers about the log files. I will even answer questions about my program and it's use absolutely at no additional cost to a hoster (putting a signature pointing to my site in the answers of course).

I may rewrite the program in Perl giving it more power in terms of seeing not only x number of lines but also seeing only the lines haing "GET" that match a given string. Maybe returning a count of how many such GET's there have been today, or this week. All kinds of nifty bells and whistles.

Regarding the addition of comments indicating what one is seeing, I did that for myself at first and it definitely could be done, but I took them out because they cluttered up the screen more than I wanted. For myself.
This would be part of the customization I would do for each hoster. To have it output the results in whatever format and in whatever color one wanted.

Only thing I haven't figured out is how to be assured that the work I put in will have some likelihood of panning out in the long run. Without a hoster just having me do the work, keeping the program code, and dropping me like a hot potatoe.

Although I have a copyright on the program I am not sure that I would want to take the time to enforce it since I am not getting paid for any of this. Depending on the circumstances this issue does concern me somewhat. It's not that the program has such incredibly propriatery code but rather that someone could just walk away with it and not return any potential benefit to me for having created it (i.e. some exposure to my site through the link at the bottom of my explanation pages).

That's why I am looking at dealing only with reputable hosters.

Just some further thoughts for what they are worth.

I guess you could say that I am willing to become a hoster's log file support person (at least in terms of the explanatory pages and log info pages that I write up - if a client had a question). Aside from the signature I would include in all correspondance it would be like dealing with the hosting company itself.

If I was not seeing some increase in traffic for all the work I would in, then I would probably cancel the arrangement. This is another issue I have not worked out in my mind.

Would it be in a hoster's best interest to start something like this and then have me quit after a month or two?

I guess they would just go back to what they have now so in that sense nothing lost. But if my pages and program became very popular it might be perceived negatively by some clients.

Any further input or ideas on the above would be appreciated. I am still working out the details.

Am I offering too much? Too little? Does it sound about right?

Carlos