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From: Bob Proulx <bob@HIDDEN>
To: Filipus Klutiero <chealer@HIDDEN>
Subject: Re: bug#14012: Bug#703565: [coreutils] Please add timestamps to the
output of tail -f
Message-ID: <20130401173628.GA9327@HIDDEN>
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<20130320225049.GE7495@HIDDEN>
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Additionally I ran into "annotate-output" today.
NAME
annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream
DESCRIPTION
annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending
every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for
stderr.
EXAMPLE
$ annotate-output make
21:41:21 I: Started make
21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c
21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2
Since you mentioned Debian I will note that it is packaged for Debian
in the devscripts packaged. It seems to be an enhanced version of:
http://jeroen.a-eskwadraat.nl/sw/annotate
Bob
bug-coreutils@HIDDEN:bug#14012; Package coreutils.
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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:34:14 -0400
From: Filipus Klutiero <chealer@HIDDEN>
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Subject: Re: Bug#703565: [coreutils] Please add timestamps to the output of
tail -f
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Hi Bob,
On 2013-03-20 18:50, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Filipus Klutiero wrote:
>> tail --follow is useful to see what is being added to a file.
>> However, if the monitored file is followed for a certain period, it
>> doesn't indicate when the new content was added. It would be nice if
>> tail allowed to prepend timestamps to the output, as MultiTail's -ts
>> option does.
> But, but, but... multitail already does this.
>
>> This is a little delicate to do. The timestamp could be prepended to
>> each line, or only to each atomic addition to the file. Also, as we
>> don't know when the existing lines were added, we can't give them an
>> exact timestamp. MultiTail stamps them with the time of MultiTail's
>> launch, but I find that a bit misleading. I would consider simply
>> not stamping these.
> As you note there is no clean solution for those previously added
> lines. No matter what is done it cannot be correct.
I didn't mean to say there is no *clean* way to do this. For me, as long
as the program behaves according to its documentation, it's clean. The
documentation should simply explain the drawbacks.
If it's too difficult to choose one true behavior, options can be
introduced to control the output for existing content and for new
content. However, at this stage I suggest we simply figure out the best
defaults, implement that... then see if we have more insatisfaction.
But, no, there is no *easy* solution. Given that any behavior is
inconvenient, I certainly recommend to make this optional (i.e.
non-default).
>
>> In any case, as this alters the output, this should be optional.
>>
>> Scanning the changelog suggests this has not been implemented as of 8.21.
> This is most easily done using normal tools already. As you know the
> philosophy is that programs should do one thing and then those should
> work together to build more complex things. For example here is one
> way to do what you are asking. And this is just one of many
> possibilities.
>
> $ tail -f /var/log/syslog | perl -MPOSIX -lne 'print strftime("%T ",localtime()), $_;'
>
> Also there already exists multitail which does what you are asking.
> If so then why not simply use multitail? Is the natural progression
> that tail be mutated into multitail? In that case we should simply
> use multitail directly. But that does have a size penalty.
>
> $ ll -h /usr/bin/tail /usr/bin/multitail
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 264K Jan 23 2012 /usr/bin/multitail
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67K Nov 18 08:25 /usr/bin/tail
>
> Bob
I cannot answer these questions, as I do not know MultiTail. I'm not
really saying MultiTail is a problem for me at this time. If you had
asked me a couple of days ago though, I'd have had to answer I didn't
know MultiTail. To find out about it, I had to read tail's Wikipedia
page (and then, I tried 3 or 4 tail alternatives to find one with
timestamped monitoring).
I suggested this because I have to use MultiTail when I could use tail
to do my job exactly as well if only it had had this option. And, I
suppose it's not only me needing this. For example, see this thread:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21564/is-there-a-unix-utility-to-prepend-timestamps-to-lines-of-text
I understand this is a request to add a feature - the addition will
surely complexify tail and make it heavier, as you say. Although I
wouldn't think the binary would weight much more, I can see that any
growth of coreutils is a concern when considering embedded devices. If
your stance is that this feature would be worth it theoretically, but is
not worth its weight at this point, I'd suggest to have the
documentation point to MultiTail. On my side, I might suggest including
MultiTail in standard Debian. If we think this feature is just
uninteresting because it's too easy to code, then I'd suggest including
an example full command to timestamp output in the documentation, for
those of us who didn't touch perl since school days.
Thanks for the suggestions of alternatives. FWIW, the thread above had a
simpler suggestion, $ tail -f foo| ts; However, ts is in moreutils,
which isn't installed by default (in Debian), so it is no better than
MultiTail in so far as an extra package must generally be installed.
bug-coreutils@HIDDEN:bug#14012; Package coreutils.
Full text available.
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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:50:49 -0600
From: Bob Proulx <bob@HIDDEN>
To: Filipus Klutiero <chealer@HIDDEN>
Subject: Re: Bug#703565: [coreutils] Please add timestamps to the output of
tail -f
Message-ID: <20130320225049.GE7495@HIDDEN>
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Filipus Klutiero wrote:
> tail --follow is useful to see what is being added to a file.
> However, if the monitored file is followed for a certain period, it
> doesn't indicate when the new content was added. It would be nice if
> tail allowed to prepend timestamps to the output, as MultiTail's -ts
> option does.
But, but, but... multitail already does this.
> This is a little delicate to do. The timestamp could be prepended to
> each line, or only to each atomic addition to the file. Also, as we
> don't know when the existing lines were added, we can't give them an
> exact timestamp. MultiTail stamps them with the time of MultiTail's
> launch, but I find that a bit misleading. I would consider simply
> not stamping these.
As you note there is no clean solution for those previously added
lines. No matter what is done it cannot be correct.
> In any case, as this alters the output, this should be optional.
>=20
> Scanning the changelog suggests this has not been implemented as of 8.21.
This is most easily done using normal tools already. As you know the
philosophy is that programs should do one thing and then those should
work together to build more complex things. For example here is one
way to do what you are asking. And this is just one of many
possibilities.
$ tail -f /var/log/syslog | perl -MPOSIX -lne 'print strftime("%T ",local=
time()), $_;'
Also there already exists multitail which does what you are asking.
If so then why not simply use multitail? Is the natural progression
that tail be mutated into multitail? In that case we should simply
use multitail directly. But that does have a size penalty.
$ ll -h /usr/bin/tail /usr/bin/multitail
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 264K Jan 23 2012 /usr/bin/multitail
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67K Nov 18 08:25 /usr/bin/tail
Bob
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bug-coreutils@HIDDEN:bug#14012; Package coreutils.
Full text available.Received: (at submit) by debbugs.gnu.org; 20 Mar 2013 22:23:26 +0000 From debbugs-submit-bounces <at> debbugs.gnu.org Wed Mar 20 18:23:25 2013 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38139 helo=debbugs.gnu.org) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from <debbugs-submit-bounces <at> debbugs.gnu.org>) id 1UIRPo-0006wZ-Ab for submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:23:25 -0400 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:51191) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRPm-0006wS-63 for submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:23:23 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRNz-0001NJ-Rx for submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:34 -0400 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.2 (2011-06-06) on eggs.gnu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM, T_DKIM_INVALID autolearn=unavailable version=3.3.2 Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]:36242) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRNz-0001NF-Om for submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:31 -0400 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:34307) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRNx-00032X-BT for bug-coreutils@HIDDEN; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:31 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRNu-0001Mm-Sw for bug-coreutils@HIDDEN; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:29 -0400 Received: from mail-vb0-x22c.google.com ([2607:f8b0:400c:c02::22c]:53040) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from <chealer@HIDDEN>) id 1UIRNu-0001Mf-Ob for bug-coreutils@HIDDEN; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:26 -0400 Received: by mail-vb0-f44.google.com with SMTP id fr13so1467274vbb.31 for <bug-coreutils@HIDDEN>; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:21:26 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=x-received:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:subject :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=HUeYK0UUEU77un13EniWhMJpOcJBVbJvy/mjMvC/rN8=; b=cQd2i6HZPxfRcFz9+ujZIH1AnlwbZ8YatNGHf08Fl5XctCTy9guX1NeyaAb2lthBnz aMmyoe43m/8S8TxOqx6N/UymXvU9WAITla5LZWcDRNINZ7talaOXd/Z+FAmiYr1CmwjH 1e7FQo0nTwoo87MqEhj38swwD6sUYOmmHoyUq3KdWRohj8ZJZUtL2xN1ie0sGAP/VMdl GTvIA5nka/1Up3ggwJwkWmpfsf6AmB3lL0MKDqnqz7VQrkppVptuDuQygLaWxaoR2mkO TciXBUZMH+Z6lIXLctSiJQ4cm0RvhXW6cXn63rZRQ9bwCeLYv+lhwKKiOX6/U+4iiBJz D0zg== X-Received: by 10.52.99.1 with SMTP id em1mr8804114vdb.48.1363818086024; Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:21:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [192.168.1.9] (modemcable156.191-56-74.mc.videotron.ca. [74.56.191.156]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id dh7sm37615624vdb.0.2013.03.20.15.21.24 (version=TLSv1 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA bits=128/128); Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:21:25 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <514A3660.6080102@HIDDEN> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:21:20 -0400 From: Filipus Klutiero <chealer@HIDDEN> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:10.0.12) Gecko/20130116 Icedove/10.0.12 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: submit@HIDDEN, bug-coreutils@HIDDEN Subject: [coreutils] Please add timestamps to the output of tail -f Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 208.118.235.17 X-Spam-Score: -3.4 (---) X-Debbugs-Envelope-To: submit X-BeenThere: debbugs-submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.13 Precedence: list List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org> List-Unsubscribe: <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/debbugs-submit>, <mailto:debbugs-submit-request <at> debbugs.gnu.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/debbugs-submit> List-Post: <mailto:debbugs-submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org> List-Help: <mailto:debbugs-submit-request <at> debbugs.gnu.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debbugs-submit>, <mailto:debbugs-submit-request <at> debbugs.gnu.org?subject=subscribe> Sender: debbugs-submit-bounces <at> debbugs.gnu.org Errors-To: debbugs-submit-bounces <at> debbugs.gnu.org X-Spam-Score: -6.1 (------) Package: coreutils Version: 8.13 Severity: wishlist tail --follow is useful to see what is being added to a file. However, if the monitored file is followed for a certain period, it doesn't indicate when the new content was added. It would be nice if tail allowed to prepend timestamps to the output, as MultiTail's -ts option does. This is a little delicate to do. The timestamp could be prepended to each line, or only to each atomic addition to the file. Also, as we don't know when the existing lines were added, we can't give them an exact timestamp. MultiTail stamps them with the time of MultiTail's launch, but I find that a bit misleading. I would consider simply not stamping these. In any case, as this alters the output, this should be optional. Scanning the changelog suggests this has not been implemented as of 8.21.
Filipus Klutiero <chealer@HIDDEN>:bug-coreutils@HIDDEN.
Full text available.bug-coreutils@HIDDEN:bug#14012; Package coreutils.
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