Free activity logging software for linux

Pax Logging is a consolidation effort that aims to make all existing logging APIs in the Java world available for OSGi developments, driven by a Log4J backend.
Each legacy API is loaded as its own bundle. The logging service can be reloaded at run-time.
Main features:
- Log4J driving the backend implementation.
- Log4J API supported.
- Jakarta Commons Logging API supported.
- Pax Logging Service implements the standard OSGi Log Service API.
- JDK Logging API support.
- Avalon Logger API support.
- SLF4J API support.
- Knopflerfish Log service support.

MySQL Activity Report is a valuable database tuning aid.

The MySQL Activity Report package is a tool to help MySQL database administrators to collect several database parameters and variables. These collected values can be used for server monitoring or performance tuning purposes.

The most important component of the MySQL Activity Report is mysqlard. This daemon collects the data from a MySQL server and stores these values in a Round Robin Database.

The mysqlard package also contains example graphing, cron and php scripts. The cron scripts can be used to keep archives of the generated graphics and the php script shows the generated graphics and tries to give some tuning tips.

The Python logging module implements a standard logging system for Python programs. It was strongly influenced by log4j from the Apache project.

As this package is included in versions 2.3 and later, only users of earlier versions of Python would need to install this module.

There was a need for a standard logging system in Python, as comprehensively documented in PEP 282 and enthusiastically endorsed by the BDFL in the Parade of the PEPs.

By a happy coincidence, the package described here was already in development and fairly close in intent and design to the description in the aforementioned PEP, borrowing as it did heavily from JSR-47 (now JDK 1.4s java.util.logging package) and log4j.

This page describes it in more detail. As I have tweaked the package to meet comments on PEP 282, I have structured this page in the same way as the original PEP.

This package is now part of Python 2.3, but if you have an earlier version of Python, you can download the package from here and use it with Python versions between 1.5.2 and 2.2.x.

Fast Logging Project for Snort is designed to gather alerts with payload from distributed snort sensors on a central server and to store them in a database (MySQL and PostgreSQL are supported).
On the sensor, the output is written to a process called sockserv. This process is threaded; one thread receives and buffers the alert packets, and the other thread forwards them to a central server.
The output is decoupled from snort, which can proceed in sniffing instead of waiting for the output plugins. At the central server, a process called servsock gathers all alerts from the remote sensors and feeds them to the database.
A short description of alerts with high priority together with the database ID can be sent via email to a list of recipients.
Main features:
- Decoupling of the output from snort. Snort can work on new packets instead of processing the output.
- Buffering of alerts on the sensor. This is useful if you have a shortage on your network to the central server or the servsock process on the central server is not running (maybe it will be restarted due to a change to a newer version...)
- Buffering of alerts on the central server. It is not uncommon that the database (especially MySQL) is hanging during a high input rate or the rate is faster than the database is able to store.
- Fast writing to the database via an unix domain socket.
- E-Mail alerting on high priority alerts.
- Drop feature for the worst case. At least the basic alert informations are still available either via E-Mail or on stdout/syslog.
- Since version 1.0.6 the alerts which should be dropped on the central server if servsock exits are written to a swap file. So this data is still availabe.
- If alerts have to been dropped because the high water mark was reached then these data are not written to the swap file.
Enhancements:
- Several checks were added, the alert data from Snort got a tag, and a restart of Snort is now checked.
- getpacket now has base 64 support.
- The statistics are now generated via the control thread so some signals are no longer necessary.
- The exit handler was rewritten and a cache for signatures was added.
- This cache can accelerate the insert rate by up to a factor of two and is implemented as a red black tree.
- During runtime, the only SELECT statement is for the signature ID, and all other operations are INSERT statements.
- The idea is to cache all signatures that caused an alert.

Netscape Friends Activity Sidebar is a Firefox extension that helps you keep tabs on what stories your Netscape friends are submitting, commenting, and voting on. A new toolbar button (shown in the extension preview image) features Chad, the older, more mature brother of AOLs little yellow chat mascot. When there is new activity by your friends (i.e., a new comment, story submission, or vote, depending on your settings), the button will be activated and Chad will send a friendly wave your way. Clicking on the activated button will open a list of your friends activity in the sidebar, allowing you to easily browse their stories and comments. Each time you view your friends activity, you will only be shown activity that is new since the last time you opened the sidebar.

Note: The sidebar limits activity to five items for each friend. If there are more than five items to view, a "View all of Chads activity" link will be shown at the bottom of the friends section. You can always view all of a friends activity by clicking on their name or avatar.

To make use of this extension, you must be logged into Netscape.com. If you do not have a Netscape.com account, sign up at http://www.netscape.com/signup Accounts are free, and it only takes a few minutes to create one. Once you have a Netscape.com account, you can submit stories and videos, vote for other peoples stories, rate comments, comment on stories you find interesting, as well as use this extension.

httplog is a replacement for Apaches rotatelogs and Andrew Fords chronolog. It allows you to specify a logfile using strftime paramaters in the filename to act as a template.
This means that the logs in your logfiles will also be sorted according to the filename. For example, if you specify a logfile of /var/log/http%Y%m%d.log, a new log file would be generated each day, with content for only that one day.
It also supports compression of logfiles using gzip, and many other useful functions.
It takes one argument at the command line, the path to a logfile as a template.
The template pathname can use any valid special characters permitted in strftime(3). Other optional arguments can be appended to the command line.
If you want to have httplog run as a different user and/or group (instead of running as root - possible security risks), you can use the `-u and `-g to have httplog run as that user and/or group.
You can also specify `-b to have httplog use a custom buffer size for memory storage of log data, rather than the default value of just line buffering mode (flushes data per newline).
If you want to have your logfiles gzipped because of size constraints, you can now use the `-z option to have httplog gzip all logfiles once its done writing all data to them (when a rollover period hits and a new logfile is to be created).
You may have a symlink to the currently active logfile by using the `-s option and specifying a filename to be used as the symlink.
This program makes Apache act similar to Microsofts IIS webserver in its logging style (as opposed to every logfile entry in one single huge logfile). This allows you to easily maintain your webserver logfiles for statistics packages in an easily organizable manner without user intervention.
Because of the buffer option added since v1.5, httplog may also be usefull for extremely large sites that get thousands of hits per second, and typically disable logging to save their hard drives from dying.
The buffer size option can be used to create an extremely large buffer in ram so that logfiles would not be flushed as often as if it were in line buffering mode, and in essence, could prolong the life of your valuable drives by decreasing their activity.
Enhancements:
- Removed a couple of lines of code that could cause segfaults if errors were imminent while opening new a file or allocating the buffer memory

X11 Disk Activity Feedback shows disk activity by animating the X11 cursor.

It provides a visual feedback of local disk activity by changing the default X11 mouse pointer to an animated wheel.

Installation:

Untar and change into the new directory and:

# xmkmf
# make
# make install

Simple Log is a small library that does logging very simply and requires you to do almost nothing (other than actually logging) to get log output to happen. Simple Log is much simpler to use than a logging framework, especially in terms of configuration.
It doesnt attempt to solve every logging problem in one package, but contains enough features to be a viable alternative for most applications that need logging. This tool will handle the logging needs of most small- to large-sized projects, but with an almost non-existent learning curve.
Enhancements:
- This release is primarily about the addition of log rolling (by time of day, file size, or custom strategy), the inclusion of a small but humorous user guide, the fixing of a raft of minor bugs, and the inclusion of a few other small features increasing flexibility.