How To Use FileLocator Pro to Search Log Files

by a guest poster 

This is a guest post by Jasenko Dizdarevic

I’m going to show some of the capabilities of FileLocator Pro searching through compressed webserver log files.

FileLocator Pro is a professional tool developed by Mythicsoft Ltd., UK based specialist in data processing and transformation. FileLocator Pro is a tool for data professionals, developed by professionals, specifically for people who handle a lot of data on a monthly, daily, or even hourly basis.

There is a less intense yet still immensely useful free version available too, the somewhat famous Agent Ransack. Check the feature list to compare the two.

Search In Server Log Files

For our example we would like to find all instances of access to a webserver from an IP adress starting with 192.88.*.* , a fairly common task.

Downloaded server log files are often in compressed format. Unziping or otherwise decompressing a whole bunch of them before you can search them would be bugging if not a real menace. Fortunately FileLocator Pro can search inside compressed files.

First, start FileLocator Pro and make sure that the compressed format support is checked:

The blue elipsis are marking selected compressed file formats to search through, and the red rectangle denotes the proper tab to click after FileLocator Pro startup.

Click the main tab and insert a regular expression to search for. In this case:

192.88.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+

After clicking start the search is executed. Once the search is complete your window should look something like this:

The blue rectangle shows the location where the expression has been found – note that FileLocator Pro really did search through the actual zip file to extract information.

The two red rectangles display the results at their respective positions in the file and the time it took to complete the search; in this case less than 1 second against a 12MB+ compressed file.

Using the built-in viewer you can examine each result further.

Double-clicking on one of the search results to view it in context in the file.

Aside from the contents preview, you can also use the LocationBar (left-hand side of the screen) which acts as a quick-preview and quick-navigation tool for inspecting the results.

Jasenko Dizdarevic, Software Developer – Mythicsoft Ltd. – Oxford, UK
@glembay