Implement graphical event/syslog viewer application

[richienyhus]

Haiku needs a graphical event/syslog viewer. This would just be a GUI for viewing logs produced by the Launch Daemon, Syslog Daemon etc.

Implementations on other systems include: Windows Event Viewer, KSystemLog, Apple system Console, Gnome Log File Viewer.

[pulkomandy]

tail -f /var/log/syslog ? Why write a GUI that would do just the same?

[richienyhus]

Replying to pulkomandy:

tail -f /var/log/syslog ? Why write a GUI that would do just the same?

Well isn't Haiku meant to be a desktop oriented operating system?

I did negate to mention some of the extra functionality that system log viewers generally have:

• filter events by component
• filter events by severity
• filter events by host
• filter events by date/time
• filter events by custom criteria
• basic event monitoring (this should be outsourced to ActivityMonitor on Haiku)
• event query/search assistance

[humdinger]

I'd also like to see a GUI log viewer, but I consider it a typical "3rd party opportunity". :)

Maybe something to consider for a couple of GCI tasks.

[richienyhus]

That's the other thing I forgot to talk about, KSystemLog and Gnome Log File Viewer are not normally pre-installed on Linux operating systems and have to be downloaded through the package manager. However Windows Event Viewer and Apple system Console are bundled with the operating system on those desktop oriented platforms.

I think initially the application should merely be available via HaikuDepot on R1, but long term the application should be bundled with Haiku in R2 or R3.

And yea, the application would make a good multi-part project for GCI.

[axeld]

To make a syslog viewer actually useful, we would need to start writing our log entries in binary format, or at least provide a lot more structured information by default.

[richienyhus]

Here is a possible way to implement severity :

Severity	Keyword	Description
Emergency	emer	System is unusable
Alert	alrt	Should be corrected immediately
Critical	crit	Critical conditions
Error	erro	Error conditions
Warning	warn	May indicate that an error will occur if action is not taken
Notice	note	Events that are unusual, but not error conditions
Informational	info	Normal operational messages that require no action
Debug	dbug	Debugging information

Example:

KERN: info: radeon_hd: dp_setup_connectors: found dp connector on index 0
KERN: warn: radeon_hd: dp_aux_speak: dp_aux channel flags not zero!
KERN: info: Last message repeated 6 times.
KERN: erro: radeon_hd: dp_aux_transaction: IO Error. 7 attempts
KERN: note: radeon_hd: dp_setup_connectors: connector(0): failed read of DPCD
KERN: info: radeon_hd: detect_displays: connector(0): Checking DP.
KERN: info: radeon_hd: ddc2_dp_read_edid1
KERN: note: radeon_hd: ddc2_dp_read_edid1: connector(0) missing valid DisplayPort data!
KERN: info: radeon_hd: detect_displays: connector(0): bit-banging ddc for EDID.
KERN: note: DDC: ddc2_read: DDC information read failure

Long term we would need something like this:

2016-10-12T23:20:50.52Z: BePC101: KERN: note: radeon_hd: ddc2_dp_read_edid1: connector(0) missing valid DisplayPort data!

Here is a breakdown of each value:

Date Time	Host Name	System Component	Severity	Process or Application	Message Content	Extra Message
2016-10-12T23:20:50.52Z:	BePC101:	KERN:	note:	radeon_hd:	ddc2_dp_read_edid1:	connector(0) missing valid DisplayPort data!