NAME

App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple - application class for managing a simple sysadmin log

VERSION

version 0.009

SYNOPSIS

    require App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple;
    App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple->new()->run();

DESCRIPTION

App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple provides an easy way to maintain a simple single-host system administration log.

The log is single-host in the sense that it does not log anything about the host. While you can obviously state what host you're talking about in your log entry, there is nothing done automatically to differentiate such log entries, and there is no built-in way to log from one host to another.

The logs themselves are also simple - you get a single line of plain text to say what you have to say. That line gets logged in a fashion that is easy to read with this script, with cat, or it can be parsed with Text::Markdown (or Text::MultiMarkdown, which is a more modern drop-in replacement) and served on the web.

If you need more than a single line of text, you may wish to use that line to point to a pastebin - you can easily create and retrieve them from the command line with App::Pastebin::sprunge.

There is also no way to audit that the logs are correct. It can be incorrect in a number of ways:

• SUDO_USER or USER can be spoofed

• The files can be edited at any time, they are chmod 644 and owned by an unprivileged user

• The timestamp depends on the system clock

• ...etc

Nonetheless, this is a simple, easy, and fast way to get a useful script for managing a simple sysadmin log. We believe the 80/20 rule applies: You can get 80% of the functionality with only 20% of a "real" solution. In the future, each log entry might be committed to a git repository for additional tracking.

METHODS

new

Obviously, the constructor returns an App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple object. It takes a hash of options which specify:

• logdir

  The directory where to find the sysadmin log. Defaults to /var/log/sysadmin.

• user

  The user who owns the sysadmin log. Should be unprivileged, but could be anything. Defaults to the current user.

• date

  The date to use instead of today.

• udp

  A hashref of data regarding UDP usage. If you don't want to send a UDP datagram, omit this. Otherwise, it has the following structure:

      my %udp_data = (
          irc => 1,           # Whether to insert IRC colour codes
          host => 'localhost',# What hostname to send to
          port => 9002,       # What port to send to
      );

• http

  A hashref of data regarding HTTP usage. If you don't want to send a HTTP message, omit this. Otherwise, it has the following structure:

      my %http_data = (
          uri => 'http://localhost', # What uri to send to
          method => 'post',          # What method to send using
      );

• index_preamble

  The text to prepend to the index page. Can be anything - by default, it is a short explanation of the rationale for using this system of logging, which probably won't make sense for your context.

• view_preamble

  A string which gets prepended to the log being viewed (ie. at the top of the log file).

• read_from

  An opened filehandle reference to read from to get the log entry. Defaults to STDIN.

run

This runs the application in the specified mode: view or log (default).

AVAILABILITY

The project homepage is http://p3rl.org/App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple.

The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a CPAN site near you, or see https://metacpan.org/module/App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple/.

SOURCE

The development version is on github at http://github.com/doherty/App-Sysadmin-Log-Simple and may be cloned from git://github.com/doherty/App-Sysadmin-Log-Simple.git

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

You can make new bug reports, and view existing ones, through the web interface at https://github.com/doherty/App-Sysadmin-Log-Simple/issues.

AUTHOR

Mike Doherty <doherty@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2011 by Mike Doherty.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

cpanm App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install App::Sysadmin::Log::Simple