[tlug] Async log scanning

["Ian Wells" <ijw@example.com>]

I was talking to someone (sorry, can't remember who) about using Perl
for log-tailing and error-spotting activities, and I recommended POE.
Here's the (not very hard to guess) link:

http://poe.perl.org/

The Python equivalent is Twisted, and both are basic event-loop
handlers along with support for a variety of event sources.  With
both, it's easy to set it up to call a function each time a line is
added to a log, for instance.  If you want to go over the top, you can
then attach that to an asyncronous mailer, IRC bot, Jabber bot or MSN
messenger interface to report your problems.

I toyed with this to scan logs on a Windows server and it had decent
potential.  (I gave up because the server was behind a firewall that
disallowed outgoing connections, so I haven't actually taken this all
the way, though.)

-- 
Ian.