KmTail is a KDE4 version of the venerable Ktail program. It has pretty much
the same features and allows you to monitor various log files. Note that most
files in /var/log are only root-readable so you will have to start KmTail with
kdesu for it to be useful. Log files are added via the File menu as usual or may 
be dragged from a file manager. Tabs may be reordered by dragging them around.

KmTail now does its own file tailing, external programs are no longer used.

KmTail 0.5 now supports reading from named pipes. You can drive the pipe from syslog-ng
and this permits exposing the syslog facility and priority information, thus allowing
much better high-lighting of log messages. To create a named pipe issue the command:

	mkfifo /var/log/messages.fifo

say. Now in your /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf you need to create a new destination
something like this:

# destination pipe for general messages
destination p_messages { pipe("/var/log/messages.fifo" 
template("$HOST $FACILITY $PRIORITY $DATE $PROGRAM $PID $MSG\n")
group(wheel) perm(0644); };

The template must be exactly as shown, the other names are up to you. Note that the pipe
need not be opened in read/write mode, as was previously stated! Now add a new log 
statement something like:

log { source(src); filter(f_messages); destination(p_messages); };

Simply open the pipe from KmTail and enjoy! Note because KmTail is reading a pipe, there
is no longer a 1000 line history when you open the file. Also, the highlighting colours
and background are hard-coded for simplicity.

Since KmTail 0.9 date/time extraction is possible to convert non-standard log files into
the syslog format, increasing legibility. Presets are provided for many common log
file formats and you may also specify our own. What's This popups provide some guidance
on regexps and templates. (See also [1] and [2].) It is also possible to specify the number 
of columns (fields) the message is parsed into, which will also increase legibility for 
certain logs.

Robin Atwood ( mailto://robin@binro.org )

References
1. http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.6/qregexp.html#details
2. http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.6/qdatetime.html#fromString-2