since: Since you last checked

I promised I would get since onto these pages before the end comes, mostly because I don’t remember any other log viewer that has this behavior by default … and I want to be able to remember it in the future.

It’s hard for me to be sure though, after so many years and so many log utilities.

since seems different because, as you might have inferred from the screenshot, it only displays log data since the last time it checked. So you can see the last portions of pacman.log at the top of that image, then the repository update. The next invocation of since only shows the two lines that had been added.

I’m sure other tail-esque tools can do this, and possibly add a few nifty tricks in passing. It’s just a matter of finding the right flags and getting them in order.

For its own part, since keeps its state file in ~/.since, and you have the option to ignore it. You can also tell since to use a special state file, to run periodically, to ignore compressed logs, ignore missing logs, and a lot of other options.

I am not a real bloodhound when it comes to keeping an eye on logs, so at its best, since is useful … but only rarely. On my pseudo-desktop system, there’s almost no call for it.

On a more complex system or in a situation where log files are critical, it might save you some time trying to get the information you need. I’m willing to give it a thumbs-up. 🙂

rsstail: One of two possible reactions

This is one of those times when I’ll show you something, and it will either mean next to nothing … or it will reach out, grab you by the throat and pull you face-first into the screen yelling, “That’s what I’ve been looking for!” 😯

Here’s rsstail:

Not much to look at, but this is definitely one of those tools you have to get close to, if you want to see the potential.

Yes, as you can see there, rsstail basically watches a feed, then spits out the title of the newest entry. No more than that.

But it also has options to show links, comments, authors and more. You can customize text, yank out “Title” or “Link,” and in short, wrangle with the results to a high degree.

Again, that might not enthuse you, but the clever among you will have already started work on a way to jam this into conky, or hotwire it into an IRC client.

And the truly dedicated will attempt to run this through an SMS portal, and send themselves text messages for truly critical events.

rsstail is simple, flexible, intuitive and best of all, begs to be put to use in a dozen ways. It’s one of those rare tools that makes me wish I cared more for news feeds. And if you’re into multitail, the home page says it can work as a plugin. 😐

rsstail is in Debian and Arch, although the AUR version will require a few oddball dependencies to get it going. Enjoy. 😉