--daemon

Run in the background.

--dirs DIR1 [DIR2 ...]

The list of directories in which to monitor files for changes. Defaults to /var/log/httpd.

--excluded-dir XDIR1 [XDIR2 ...]

A list of directories to exclude from monitoring. These must be full filesystem paths. Defaults to empty (no exclusions).

--excluded-re REGEXP1 [REGEXP2 ...]

A list of exclude regular expressions; any directory paths that match will be excluded from monitoring. Defaults to empty (no exclusions).

--filter=REGEXP

A file filter regular expression; only filenames that match will be monitored. Defaults to '[._]log$' (files ending in .log or _log). Set to '.*' to include all files.

--follow-symlinks

If set, follow symbolic links in the filesystem.

--no-init

If set, any existing state file will be ignored, and only changes from the current file state will be sent. Without --no-init, on the first run (before any state file is created), any existing content in the monitored files will be sent as well as changes (which could be a large amount of data if you have big files).

--state-file-name=FILE

Name of file in which to store state between runs. Defaults to '.tailtoscribe' in the working directory.

--sleep-interval=SECS

Where a kernel-based file change notification system is not available, this specifies the number of seconds between scans for file changes.

To minimise CPU usage, installing Linux::Inotify2 is highly recommended.

Scribe Options

--host, --port

Host and port of Scribe server. Defaults to localhost, port 1463.

--category=CATEGORY

Default Scribe logging category. Defaults to 'httpd'.

--level=LEVEL

Default log level. Defaults to 'info'. May be set to any valid Log::Dispatch level (debug, info, notice, warning, error, critical, alert, emergency).

--retry-plan-a=MODE, --retry-plan-b=MODE, --retry-buffer-size=SIZE, --retry-count=COUNT, --retry-delay=DELAY

See Log::Dispatch::Scribe for full description of these options.

--pidfile=FILE

Write process ID to file FILE. tail_to_scribe.pl will use this file to check if an instance is already running, and refuse to start if the PID in this file corresponds to another tail_to_scribe.pl process. Checks are skipped if no pidfile is given.

--debug, --debug=FILE

Enable debugging to standard error or to file.

--config=CONFIG_FILE

Specify the location of the configuration file (an included perl script). Defaults to /etc/tail_to_scribe.conf. A typical configuration file might look like this:

  # Set my arg values
  my %localargs = (
      dirs => [ '/var/log/httpd' ],
      filter => 'access[._]log$',
      'exclude-dir' => [ '/var/log/httpd/fastcgi' ],
      'state-file-name' => '/var/log/httpd/.tailtoscribe',
  );
  # Copy into args to override defaults
  $args{$_} = $localargs{$_} for keys %localargs;
  1; # Must return a true value

In addition to all of the options available on the command line, a custom message filter may also be included, e.g.

  $msg_filter = sub {
    my ($self, $filename, $line) = @_;
    return ('info', 'httpd', "$filename\t$line");
  };

See "msg_filter" in File::Tail::Scribe for more details on the msg_filter.