[ciapug] suggestions on reading a log file

[David Champion]

Out of curiosity, I googled for "php tail" and found this link right away...

http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/file/1656.html

This one shows doing using the unix "tail" command...

http://www.codecomments.com/archive228-2005-2-405524.html

I'm sure there are several other examples out there.

-dc

David Champion wrote:
> I don't know a lot about how various commercial virtual hosting is set 
> up, but I would bet most of them would use seperate logs. We do for our 
> hosting clients. It could be considered a security risk to allow other 
> clients to view a common log.
> 
> You could used the php fopen / fread commands, I'm sure with a little 
> trickery you could emulate the unix "tail" command.
> 
> -dc
> 
> Barry Buelow wrote:
> 
>> Hello,
>>  
>>  I've been lurking for a few months and trying not to embarass myself 
>> by asking too stupid a question, but neither my, nor your, luck can 
>> last forever.   
>>  1.   I'm working on a web page that will be on a commercial hosting 
>> site (tbd).  Past experience with these sites is that they have a 
>> common error log file.  I usually look at the "tail" of it.   
>>  It struck me that I could have a php page go get the "tail" and strip 
>> it down to items from my site.  Something like the last 10 matched 
>> substring.  Reading the entire huge file doesn't seem like a good 
>> idea.  Nor do I want to do anything that is a major load on the 
>> system.  The only idea I have is to open the log file in read mode, 
>> then replicate the "tail" function using file pointer manipulation.   
>>  Is there a way to copy the last 1000 lines or some other interesting 
>> trick?
>>  Any suggestions?
>>  
>>  
>>  2.  What is recommended practice for processing form data to prevent 
>> attacks?   addslashes?
>>  escape_shell_cmd?
>>  string length limiting?
>>  other?
>>  Is there a particular web page that lists best practices for security?
>>  
>>  tia,
>>  Barry
>>  
>>  
>>  
>>  ================
>>  I'm 56, live in the Cedar Rapids area, have a BSCS which is now 
>> yellow and curled.   Written: pascal, pl1, assembly, c(not ++), nearly 
>> all of it embedded,  haven't learned a new language in ages as career 
>> moves have taken me away from sw.  Read 3 books on php and digging in, 
>> but have to "real world" experience.