man grokevt-parselog (1): Parse a windows event log and generate human-readable output based on message resources stored in a database.

SYNOPSIS

grokevt-parselog -?|--help .PP grokevt-parselog -l database-dir .PP grokevt-parselog -m database-dir log-type .PP grokevt-parselog [-v] [-H] [-h] [-U] [-u] database-dir log-type .SH DESCRIPTION grokevt-parselog reads a windows event log (.evt file) and combines that information with messages templates and other resources stored in a pre-generated database. This is then printed to stdout in a comma-separated values (CSV) format. The database must be created by grokevt-builddb(1).

ARGUMENTS

database-dir

This is the directory where the database is stored. Currently, the actual log files from the original system are also stored in this directory tree.

log-type

This is the windows name for the log. By default windows has the following logs:

             Application
             Security
             System

But others may have been created by third party software. Use the -l option to print a list of all available log types. (The log names are case-sensitive.)

OPTIONS

-?: Prints a basic usage statement.
--help: Same as -?.
-l: Log list mode. Lists the logs available in the specified database.
-m: Meta information mode. Lists meta information stored in the header of the specified log file. Does not print any actual log records. (Format of output in this mode is still subject to change.)
-v: Verbose mode. Prints status messages to stderr, which can be helpful for debugging.
-h: Prints a header row at the top of the CSV output containing labels for each column. (This is the default behavior.)
-H: Disables the printing of a header row. This is useful when grokevt-parselog is used in a script.
-u: Enables the UTF-8 output of some strings. This can be dangerous on terminals that are not configured to support UTF-8.
-U: Disables the use of UTF-8 for output. Unicode strings are instead converted to UTF-8 first, and then any remaining non-ASCII characters are quoted. (This is the default behavior.)

EXAMPLES

To list all available logs types stored in '~/example.grokevt':

          grokevt-parselog -l ~/example.grokevt

To read the 'Application' log from the database stored in '~/example.grokevt' and print it to stdout:

          grokevt-parselog ~/example.grokevt Application

To read the 'System' log from the database stored in '~/example.grokevt' and print it to stdout without a header, and with verbosity turned on:

          grokevt-parselog -v -H ~/example.grokevt System

BUGS

Probably a few. This script has not been extensively tested with some guest platforms.

The file event log file format is pretty well understood and implemented, but some diabolical wrapped, dirty, or fragmentary logs may not be correctly parsed.

Unicode support is currently limited. Any suggestions on how to better handle unicode output would be appreciated.

CREDITS

Originally written by Jamie French. Converted to Python and extended by Timothy D. Morgan. Andreas Schuster has contributed greatly to the understanding of the event log format.

LICENSE

Please see the file "LICENSE" included with this software distribution.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License version 2 for more details.