*nice* maillog output

Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha strange at nsk.no-ip.org
Wed Jun 23 10:08:43 UTC 2004


On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 02:35:27AM +0100, Craig Tinson wrote:
> ok.. this doesn't work...
> 
> tail -F /var/log/maillog | egrep --line-buffered -v 
> 'imapd|connection|processing' | awk '{print $1" "$2" -("$3")"}' | grcat 
> conf.craig
> 
> am presuming that awk doesn't like not have a finished pipe.. but the 
> man page doesn't mention anything about buffering..
> 
> awk seems the way to go.. because...
> 
> tail -n500 -F /var/log/maillog | egrep --line-buffered -v 
> 'imapd|connection|processing' | cut -d" " -f0,3,6,7,8,9,10 | grcat 
> conf.craig

Did you try tail -n500 -F with awk? Or just tail -F?

> runs, at the moment, about 30-60 mins from the end of the log... but 
> thats probably something completely different....which is a shame.. as 
> it gives as close to an output as i'm looking for...
> 
> 01:59:16 vchkpw-pop3: vpopmail user not found
> 01:59:30 vchkpw-pop3: (PLAIN) login success craig at 8010.co.uk:127.0.0.1
> 02:02:55 identified spam (19.1/5.0) for kelerion at thenewmatrix.net:510
> 02:02:55 identified spam (9.8/5.0) for mark.laurence at polygraphica.com:510
> 02:03:14 clean message (-4.9/5.0) for craig at 8010.co.uk:510
> 02:03:24 identified spam (19.4/5.0) for kelerion at thenewmatrix.net:510
> 02:03:42 clean message (3.6/5.0) for joe at blogs.com:510
> 
> 
> am I missing something fundamental here? I get that the pipes are not 
> passing completed files (EOF's) to the next command.. but I can't see 
> (apart from awk) what could be stopping the chain...

No file ever ends (EOF). tail never closes its standard output.

Buffers are the problem, I just expected grep would be the one buffering
the most.

The program should still work, but you'll get a delay between what happens
and what you see.

Regards,
Luciano Rocha





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