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Lnav Logfile Navigator

(lnav.org)
156 points alexzeitler | 2 comments | 17 Jun 24 09:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.701s | source
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justusthane ◴[18 Jun 24 12:55 UTC] No.40717275[source]▶
lnav is something I keep coming back to over and over really _wanting_ to like, but I've never managed to figure it out. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but I find the docs confusing and incomplete, and I always end up getting stuck and going back to Vim and/or VisiData.

Does anyone have any good tutorials or resources apart from the official ones?

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1. gregopet ◴[18 Jun 24 15:23 UTC] No.40718862[source]▶
it's worth it just for the navigation helpers alone: '2' will bring you to the next 20-minute-after-the-hour entry (pressing again takes you to the next hour+20 minutes, same for the other 0-5 numbers). E will bring you to the next error, W to the next warning. And O will take you to the next entry with the same correlation ID (request/session/whatever .. you define it). And adding shift to all those keys reverses the direction. And naturally we're just scratching the surface.

I recently started appreciating lnav with JSON logs, where you can recreate a normal log-like experience by picking fields that are displayed (but you can still press a key to see all the JSON fields when you need them). I do wish there was support for switching formats so I could switch between different "views" over the same data, maybe it will be possible someday :)

lnav was a godsend with a particular project several years ago where we had a server bombarded with IOT messages and had to create some order from all the chaos. I actually went and donated some money to the project then, it really made my life easier.

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2. tstack ◴[19 Jun 24 01:26 UTC] No.40723853[source]▶
> I do wish there was support for switching formats so I could switch between different "views" over the same data, maybe it will be possible someday :)

I created https://github.com/tstack/lnav/issues/1274 to remember this