LogViewer GUI and Quick Links panel

Accessing log entries

The LogViewer GUI opens to display a Quick Links panel that has shortcuts to the logs that are present on the local file system. When you click on a log shortcut, LogViewer opens a tab that displays the most recent log entries.

Note: If you hover your mouse cursor over a GUI tab, toolbar button, or field, a description or configuration instruction specific to that object appears.

LogViewer GUI and log tabs

Each log that you open using the LogViewer GUI is displayed on a separate tab whose label contains the name of the log profile and an icon that indicates the log type. The log entries are highlighted using the colors configured for the log debug levels. A log tab that displays dynamic log updates also has a tool bar for common operations.

The lower panel of a log tab contains the following sub-tabs:

• Preview—displays the unparsed log-file text for the currently selected log entries

• Filter—lists and permits management of the currently active filters for the log

• Status—displays status information about the current log

• Plugin—displays information about the plug-ins associated with the log

• Legend—displays a legend that correlates log file names to the numbers in the File column on a log tab that contains multiple open logs, for example, merged logs; is not shown for log comparisons

The LogViewer GUI allows you to drag and drop a log file into the GUI window. If you drop a file onto an open log tab, LogViewer provides options such as merging or comparing the log with another.

You can open a tab to list static log entries, such as the contents of an archived log or a snapshot of entries from an active log, and can pause the updates to active logs. The GUI also includes a text-search function.

GUI-based log filtering

The GUI provides a Filter Manager applet that lists the filters defined using the CLI or GUI and allows filter creation, modification, and deletion. A GUI operator can also use Filter Manager to test the regular expressions as filter match criteria.

To rapidly isolate a specific log entry or type of entry, you can create a temporary filter, or quick filter, by entering a regular expression in the field below a column header on a log tab. You can convert a quick filter to a saved filter for later use. A drop-down menu above the Level column allows the immediate filtering of log entries based on the debug level.

You can also create and use simple filters. These filters do not require the use of regular expressions, but instead, perform a case insensitive “contains” filtration of a string you specify. The use of simple filters must be enabled using the Preferences→Options menu option.

A color that is specified as the highlight color for a filter is saved with the filter and applies to all logs that use the filter.