vimeo / tailgate

Tailgate is a nodejs app to pipe `tail -F` into websockets. It's a very simple way to have real-time access to your logs.

Tailgate

Tailgate is a nodejs app to pipe tail -F into websockets.

It's a very simple way to have real-time access to your logs. It uses socket.io and coffeescript, and is great for keeping track of scribe logs.

API

Tailgate exposes its feeds as a simple pub/sub api through socket.io connections making it easy to build visualizations or monitoring tools as simple web pages.

Installation

cd <install/directory>
git clone [email protected]:vimeo/tailgate.git
cd tailgate
npm install
cp conf/conf-dist.sh conf/conf.sh

Edit conf/conf.sh to have the correct values for your installation.

Optional

If you want to use the init.d.sh script.

cp startup/init.d-dist.sh startup/init.d.sh
sudo ln -s <fullpath to tailgate/startup/init.d.sh> /etc/init.d/tailgate

Edit the startup/init.d.sh script to use the installation directory and tailgate user to run as. Ensure the tailgate user has write permissions to startup/ so that it can write the pidfile.

sudo /etc/init.d/tailgate start
sudo /etc/init.d/tailgate stop
sudo /etc/init.d/tailgate restart

Troubleshooting

• Make sure the HTTP port specified in conf/conf.sh is not already in use
• Enable logging in conf.sh by setting LOGGING="1"

tailgate's Issues

coffeescript 1.7.1 'unexpected if' (+fix)

$ ./tailgate.coffee
/home/sqz/projects/tailgate/bin/tailgate.coffee:240:16: error: unexpected if
@refs[dir] = if @refs[dir]? @refs[dir]+1 else 1
^^
$ git diff
diff --git a/bin/tailgate.coffee b/bin/tailgate.coffee
index ca5b6e5..6a93c20 100755
--- a/bin/tailgate.coffee
+++ b/bin/tailgate.coffee
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ class Tailer
register: (dir, format) ->

                # track refs so we know when to kill the tail process
-               @refs[dir] = if @refs[dir]? @refs[dir]+1 else 1
+               @refs[dir] = @refs[dir]? @refs[dir]+1 : 1

                path = env.TAILGATE_DATA_DIR+"/"+dir

Instructions for installation

People who are not familiar with node.js might need short note, that they need to run npm install before starting tailgate.