Swatch: The Simple Log Watcher | Linux Magazine

Swatch isn’t a cleverly designed watch from the 1980s but you’ll think it’s just as handy (and cleverly designed) as one. Like Logwatch, swatch is a perl script that watches your logs but swatch watches them for regular expressions that you configure. Swatch will notify you via mail or the console screen (stdout) when it matches the configured log file entries with your watchfor directives.

Swatch picks up and delivers messages as intrusions occur so that you can halt any potential breakins or hacks before the intruder does any damage. It is one of the most important defensive weapons in your system administrator arsenal.

Powerful tool, that I need to consider using… as a way to be more proactive with log messages.