logstation

Tails a set of log files and serves them up on a web server with syntax colors via regex.

Binaries available in releases. See usage below.

Goals:

• Run on anything and everything
• Support as many browsers as possible
• Ease deployment and usage with a single executable with minimal configuration required

Developed with Go and React

Usage

• Call logstation or logstation.exe
  • It will create an logstation.conf in your current directory if one doesn't exist and exit
  • Update logstation.conf as desired
  • Call logstation or logstation.exe again
• Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8884 to start tailing (refer to logstation.conf for listen IP and port)

You can also use -c your-logstation.conf argument to specify a config file

Take a look at an example logstation.conf here.

Containers

An official image is published to GitHub Container Registry on every tag push. It is built from Chainguard base images, runs as a non-root user, and is available for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

The image works with both docker and podman. The Containerfile is self-contained -- it builds the web frontend and the Go binary in one shot:

podman build -f Containerfile -t logstation:dev .

On first run, if no config file is present, logstation generates a default logstation.conf in /config and then starts the server. To run it with a directory of logs:

podman run -d --name logstation \
  -p 8884:8884 \
  -v /var/log:/logs:z \
  ghcr.io/jdrews/logstation:latest

Then navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8884.

To use your own config, bind-mount it with the :z SELinux flag so the container's non-root user can read it (this works with both docker and podman, including rootless podman). Point the logs list in your config at the mounted files, e.g. /logs/*.log:

podman run -d --name logstation \
  -p 8884:8884 \
  -v /var/log:/logs:z \
  -v ./logstation.conf:/config/logstation.conf:z \
  ghcr.io/jdrews/logstation:latest

Building

logstation uses goreleaser for all releases

Start by building the web frontend:

• cd web; yarn build

To build all targets locally you can run the following in the root directory:

• goreleaser build --snapshot --clean

If you want to build for a specific target you can set environment variables

• In bash this would look like:
  GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 goreleaser build --snapshot --clean --single-target
• In powershell this would look like:
  $env:GOOS="linux"; $env:GOARCH="amd64"; goreleaser build --snapshot --clean --single-target

Reference the releases and .goreleaser.yaml for all officially supported targets.

Releasing

• Push a tag following semver
  • git tag -a 2.0.0-beta1 -m "2.0.0-beta1"
  • git push origin 2.0.0-beta1
• Ensure you have an environment variable with GITHUB_TOKEN="YOUR_GH_TOKEN" and minimum of write:packages permissions
• Release!
  • cd web; yarn build
  • cd ..; goreleaser release
• Read the goreleaser quickstart for more details

Versions

Prior to 2.x, this app was built using Scala/Play/JS. At 2.x this app was rewritten in Go and React. If you're looking for the older versions reference the releases prior to 2.x.