Chef-Log-Tail

Chef-Log-Tail is a Chef resource/provider that allows users to tail any log file on a chef node. It was designed for Chef's who want to tail logs without having to exec calls to tail and grep.

Requirements

• Linux or OS X
• Ruby 1.9.x
• Chef 11.x
• file-tail gem
• Logs to tail

QuickStart

Publish the chef-log-tail cookbook

• If you use Berkshelf

berks cookbook 'chef-log-tail'

• Or the knife command line tool

knife cookbook upload chef-log-tail

Create a recipe using the chef-log-tail resource

log_tail "/var/logs/httpd/access_log" do 
    line_count 3000
    action :enable
end

Publish the recipe/cookbook

Add cookbook to your node(s) runlist

knife node <hostname> add run_list 'recipe[cookbook][recipe]'

Invoke chef-client on target node(s)

knife ssh 'name:*' 'sudo chef-client'

OR

Invoke chef-solo on your target node

sudo chef-solo -c solo.rb -j node.json

Examples

Tail an individual log file

log_tail "/var/log/httpd/access_log" do 
	line_count 3000
	action :enable
end

Tail multiple log files

log_tail ["/var/log/httpd/error_log","/var/log/httpd/access_log"] do
	line_count 5
	action :enable
end

Disclaimer

This resource provider is not meant as a replacement to better suited log streaming solutions such as Logstash or Splunk. The goal is to provide Chef's with a quick method of tailing logs without having to resort to making system calls to /usr/bin/tail.