buffers readlines and general popen2 confusion...

[Larry Bates]

aristotelian at onet.eu wrote:
> I'm interested in taking the output of a daemonized shell script that
> greps for patterns which would act as an argument to a script. Is it
> better to write this stuff to file and visit the file every few seconds
> or can this be done a better way. I'm hoping for a more elegant
> solution. So far I've seen some troubling info about buffer overflows
> with popen2 but it looks like the low-hanging fruit. I'm not a unixpro
> so I want to make sure anything I tackle is best practice. Suggestions
> welcomed.
> 
> -Aris
> 
Sounds like you should take a look at logdog.  It uses fifo files to
send the output of /var/log/messages and greps them for patterns.
As the daemon just looks at the fifo file for any input, it is quite
efficient.

I could be way off base about what you are trying to do, but it still
might we worth a look.

http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/LogDog/v1.0-old/

-Larry Bates