The Python tool grc is very useful to catch problems in logfiles by highlighting certain keywords and sections. It generic colourize text and can be used to colourize logfiles and output of commands. It comes with a set of pre configured expressions and it can be configured via additional regular expressions.

• The Debian 9.13 Stretch version is 1.9-1
• The Debian 10 Buster version is 1.11.3-1
• The Debian 11 Bullseye version is 1.11.3-1.1
• It is developed on github under the GPLv2.

Installation

aptitude install grc

Usage

Simplest:

grc netstat
grc ping hostname
grc tail /var/log/syslog
grc ps aux

Simple:

grc tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

Advanced:

Without grc:

tail -f myfile.log | perl -pe 's/SEVERE/\e[1;31m$&\e[0m/g'

And with grc for the first time:

mkdir ~/.grc
echo "regexp=SERVERE" > ~/.grc/myfile
echo "color=red" >>  ~/.grc/myfile
grc -c myfile tail -f myfile.log

And with grc for the second time and all times:

grc -c myfile tail -f myfile.log

• The README.markdown document on github has more info on this.

• For other uses of coloring logfiles see tail and multitail.

Links

History

Version	Date	Notes
0.1.1	2022-05-27	Update for Debian 11 Bullseye, 9.13 Stretch, change
		shell to bash, +History, Link to tail, +commands
0.1.0	2020-12-17	Initial release