#!/bin/bash # log_inspect.sh - Search or tail system log files # # Copyright (C) 2025 Coffey Labs # # This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it # under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the # Free Software Foundation, version 3 of the License. # # This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but # WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY # or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License # for more details. # # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along # with this program. If not, see . # # Usage: log_inspect.sh [search | tail ] # Description: Searches across /var/log for a pattern, or tails a specific log file. # # Most of /var/log is root-only. Run this with sudo, or results will be # quietly partial -- see the note on the search branch. set -euo pipefail if [ "${1:-}" = "search" ]; then pattern="${2:-}" if [ -z "$pattern" ]; then echo "Usage: $0 search "; exit 1 fi echo "Searching for '$pattern' in /var/log..." # 2>/dev/null hid permission errors, so an unprivileged run looked like # "no matches" rather than "could not read most of /var/log". Say so # explicitly instead. grep exits 1 on no match, which is not an error. # grep distinguishes three outcomes and they mean different things # here: 0 matched, 1 matched nothing, 2 could not read everything. The # original discarded stderr and ignored the status, so an unprivileged # run over root-owned logs was indistinguishable from a clean search. status=0 grep -R -i --color=auto -- "$pattern" /var/log 2>/dev/null || status=$? case "$status" in 0) ;; 1) echo "No matches found." ;; *) echo "Search was incomplete -- some files under /var/log could not be read." >&2 [ "$EUID" -ne 0 ] && echo "Re-run with sudo for a complete search." >&2 exit "$status" ;; esac exit 0 elif [ "${1:-}" = "tail" ]; then logfile="${2:-}" if [ -z "$logfile" ]; then echo "Usage: $0 tail "; exit 1 fi if [ ! -f "$logfile" ]; then echo "Log file '$logfile' not found."; exit 1 fi echo "== Last 100 lines of $logfile ==" tail -n 100 "$logfile" exit 0 else # Default: tail the main system log (syslog or messages) if [ -f /var/log/syslog ]; then echo "== Last 50 lines of /var/log/syslog ==" tail -n 50 /var/log/syslog elif [ -f /var/log/messages ]; then echo "== Last 50 lines of /var/log/messages ==" tail -n 50 /var/log/messages else echo "No syslog or messages log found." fi fi