write the output of a command to /var/log/user.log... each line will contain $USER, making this easy to grep for.

log() { (echo "\$ $@";$@) | logger -t $USER; }

This command is useful if you want to copy the output of a series of commands to a file, for example if you want to pastebin the output from 'uname -a', 'lspci -vvv' and 'lsmod' for video driver trouble-shooting on your favorite Linux forum. 'log' takes all the following arguments as a command to execute, with STDOUT sent to /var/log/user.log. The command is echoed to the log before it is executed. The advantages of using logger (as opposed to appending output from commands to a file) are 1) commands are always appended to the logs... you don't have to worry about clobbering your log file accidentally by using '>' rather than '>>' 2) logs are automatically cleaned up by logrotate. The following functions allow you to mark the start and end of a section of /var/log/user.log. startlog() { export LOGMARK=$(date +%Y.%m.%d_%H:%M:%S); echo "$LOGMARK.START" | logger -t $USER; } then endlog() { echo "$LOGMARK.END" | logger -t $USER; } printlog will print all lines between $LOGMARK.START and $LOGMARK.END, removing everything that is prepended to each line by logger. printlog() { sudo sed -n -e "/$LOGMARK.START/,/$LOGMARK.END/p" /var/log/user.log| sed "s/.*$USER: //"; } The following command should dump just about all the information that you could possibly want about your linux configuration into the clipboard.

startlog; for cmd in 'uname -a' 'cat /etc/issue' 'dmesg' 'lsusb' 'lspci' 'sudo lshw' 'lsmod'; do log $cmd; done; endlog; printlog | xsel --clipboard

This is ready for a trip to http://pastebin.com/, and you don't have to worry about leaving temporary files lying around cluttering up $HOME. Caveats: I'm sure that startlog, endlog, and printlog could use some cleanup and error checking... there are unchecked dependencies between printlog and endlog, as well as between endlog and startlog. It might be useful for 'log' to send stderr to logger as well.

Sample Output

$ log uname -a; sudo tail -2 /var/log/user.log
Sep 25 16:12:44 tiger-laptop tiger: $ uname -a
Sep 25 16:12:44 tiger-laptop tiger: Linux tiger-laptop 2.6.31-22-generic-pae #65-Ubuntu SMP Thu Sep 16 16:02:41 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

By: bartonski

2010-09-25 20:43:22

echo logger

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