MkConsole is a little application that displays log files on your desktop. It's useful if you have to monitor servers or you just want to keep an eye on what's going on on your machine. In its standard configuration it displays entries from any number of logfiles interleaved in a single window. MkConsole is smart enough to close and reopen files every now and then to deal with rotating files and it transparently works around stale NFS handles which often exist after your Mac wakes up from sleep and tries to read from a logfile mounted via NFS.
What's New
Version 1.11:
No functional changes but MkConsoleElement now displays an entry in the status area of the menu bar, which gives access to the preferences and allows to quit the element; no more AppleScripts for that. The source code, including all historical versions, is now in a new SVN repository.
If you run most of the time on Leopard as non-admin neither Geektool or MKconsole can show you /var/log/system.log because of lack of permissions. Somehow Console.app manages to in "Log Database Queries" but NOT directly. Is any of this registering with anyone? I am torn between thinking you should not have routine access to system.log as a regular user, but I also need to see it, so for convenience I would like to solve this.
Still works great in Leopard. The console.log file has changed and is now part of the system.log. You may have to add the new path back to the preferences MkConsole. The new path is /private/var/log/system.log
Works perfectly and it appeals to the geeky side of my personality.
Adding to the coolness, I have hooked it up to the contextual menu, via OnMyCommand (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9283), which is just geekyness galore...!
Here are my feature requests:
- An easier way of selecting logs. Preferably, using the Console.app's behavior for changing logs (e.g. automatically display the usual places for logs. Not a biggie though.)
- This is my biggest grief with MkConsole; I would love it, if there was an option to supress those dialogs that pop up, for when there is a missing log files on the hard drive, that you have specified in the list. (Sometimes I clean my system/user logs, and some accidentally gets deleted then.)
[Version 1.9]
Anonymousreviewed on 29 May 2004
Sweet!! I've used a few utilities like this over the years but they were always too ugly, intrusive, or resource-hungry to be worth keeping. This one is close to flawless. Only complaint - it comes with the font set to Lucida Grande, which is a pretty bad choice for viewing log files. It should default to using the user's monospace font, without requiring a trip to preferences.
[Version 1.7]
Anonymousreviewed on 05 Apr 2004
works perfect
[Version 1.7]
Anonymousreviewed on 16 Feb 2004
crashes on launch
[Version 1.7]
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MkConsole is a little application that displays log files on your desktop. It's useful if you have to monitor servers or you just want to keep an eye on what's going on on your machine. In its standard configuration it displays entries from any number of logfiles interleaved in a single window. MkConsole is smart enough to close and reopen files every now and then to deal with rotating files and it transparently works around stale NFS handles which often exist after your Mac wakes up from sleep and tries to read from a logfile mounted via NFS.
+8
+1
+12
emulaunch reviewed on 28 Oct 2007
+103
hced reviewed on 12 Jan 2007
Adding to the coolness, I have hooked it up to the contextual menu, via OnMyCommand (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9283), which is just geekyness galore...!
Here are my feature requests:
- An easier way of selecting logs. Preferably, using the Console.app's behavior for changing logs (e.g. automatically display the usual places for logs. Not a biggie though.)
- This is my biggest grief with MkConsole; I would love it, if there was an option to supress those dialogs that pop up, for when there is a missing log files on the hard drive, that you have specified in the list. (Sometimes I clean my system/user logs, and some accidentally gets deleted then.)
Anonymous reviewed on 29 May 2004
Anonymous reviewed on 05 Apr 2004
Anonymous reviewed on 16 Feb 2004