Tidy README
===========

tidy - Tidy up log file(s) created by syslogd and do statistics on it

Version: 1.0 / Release Date March 12, 1996
               Patchlevel 1 / March 14, 1996

Tidy cleans up the log file(s) created by the syslogd daemon. For a system
operator it is a bothersome job to sort out the interesting (sometimes
alarming) entries from a pile of standard entries. Tidy distinguishes
different services (telnet, finger, etc.) and removes standard entries.
Furthermore tidy tries to extract a remote host from the messages. These
remote hosts are added to a statistics database. The number of contacts
of each service is saved together with the time/date stamp of the last
contact. The statistics can be printed out as simple ASCII or HTML.

REQUIREMENTS
------------
Tidy requires the perl script language interpreter, version 5. It
definitely won't run on V4 pl36 or lower!

You must have syslogd running on your system. There is a little tool
(install-test) that does some simple checks to see whether syslogd is
present on your system. If you don't have syslogd, you'll have to get
the source by FTP and install it yourself. You may then have to edit
syslog.conf in order to tell syslogd to log messages from the `mail'
facility to a file. Tidy will process this file. Refer to the man pages
syslogd(8) and syslog.conf(5).

Installation
------------
See the INSTALL file.

Features
--------
If your system is on the Internet, there is a number of services that
are offered by your host, e.g. telnet, rlogin, rsh, finger, talk, ftp
and last but not least mail. If your system logger syslogd is set up
correctly, every contact from remote hosts via this services is logged
to a file, referred to as the `log file' in this description.

Tidy goes through the log file line by line and eliminates entries that are
`unsuspicious' and adds the remote hosts contained in there to a statistics
file. The action of tidy is controlled by the configuration file tidy.conf.
By default tidy recognizes the services mentioned above, further services
can be added easily.

The statistics are printed in ASCII or HTML format with the following options:
- Print time and/or date of last contact in short or long format
  below or besides the number of contacts.
- Print ruler and/or header lines to enhance readability.
- Sort output by host name, by domains or by number of connections of
  a certain service. Alphabetical sorting case sensitive/insensitive.
- Production of different statistics outputs using multiple configuration
  files.

Bug reports and suggestions are welcome!

SITES
=====
Tidy is maintained at tsx-11.mit.edu:/pub/linux/sources/sbin/tidy-1.0.tar.gz

Latest version available from "ftp://saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/tidy"
See also "http://saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de/~marek/tidy", the official
tidy Home page.

Author: Marek Rouchal, University of Bayreuth, Germany
        (marek@saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de)

