Text Log Monitor - All Release Notes

In previous builds when filtering a large file within the viewer, advancing to the last page, and the last 400 entries did not contain an item that would pass the filter, the viewer did not display the last filtered entry. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds the tray icon had a one minute delay built in as a work around for a startup issue rarely seen on Windows Vista. We believe we have resolved the issue and have therefore removed the startup delay.

When rebooting a Server 2003 machine, the service would fail to start when the service was configured to forward internal messages to a syslog server. The failure occurs when the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service has not yet started. The installation has been updated to install the service with a dependency on WMI. If the software was previously installed, you must uninstall and then re-install for this change to take effect.

Fixed a spelling error in the File and Directory Monitor Wizards.

All scheduled routines can now be disabled on specific days of the week.

When reading an entry delimited file the read performance was slow. The read algorithm has been optimized. The total time to read a delimited file now takes as little as 7% the time it took in previous builds.

When specifying a monitor exclusion period users can now choose between shutting down the monitor or continuing to monitor the file but suppressing actions.

The action configuration dialogs have been moved from the application library to our Corner Bowl Software common library enabling code reuse between all our applications. Please note there are several minor user interface differences.

In previous builds if a monitor was removed while running and the file was updated immediate after deleting the monitor, users may have seen an error message within the service log that stated a configuration failed to load. This bug has been fixed.

A bug was introduced in the previous build that prevented users from reviewing logs not configured. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds the email limiter always limited emails per the configured maximum value despite the limiter being disabled. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds the log monitor algorithm loaded entries into memory in several locations. The algorithm has been updated to stream the data from the file through each filter significantly decreasing the memory foot print and decreasing the time to read large files.

Users can now specify to exclude weekends when scheduling reports and configuring real-time monitors.

In previous builds when monitoring a directory newly created files were not read when the read method was set to READ ALL. Instead the application waited for the file to change. The behavior has been changed so newly created files are read. Please note, if the file is created while the service is off, the file will not be read when discovered.

Users now have the capability to suppress alerts and actions. Users configure alert and action suppression via the File or Directory Monitor Wizards. Once configured, the service will assign an alert flag to the real-time monitor upon an entry passing assigned filter criteria. Once the alert flag is set, filtered entries are ignored until the flag is cleared. The user can configure the alert flag to automatically clear after a period of time, for example after an hour, or the user can manually clear the flag via the user interface. Once cleared the next entry that passes the real-time monitor’s filter criteria will fire.

In previous builds the output and service output views did not properly display log entries that contained embedded carriage returns and/or line feeds. These bugs have been fixed.

When adding or removing a directory monitor’s masks, the tree view was not refreshed to reflect the changes.

We have added the ability for users to permanently disable the tray icon from within the user interface. To permanently disable the tray icon, select Options from the Tools menu item. Select the Tray Icon tab. Under the Tray Icon heading, check Disable tray icon.

Users can now de-select all checked nodes by selecting De-Select All from the Edit menu item.

In previous builds when closing the file monitor or directory monitor wizards, the entire Monitored Files tree node was updated. If there were directories being monitored that were offline the user interface would hang while attempting to retrieve a file listing for the directory monitor. Text Log Monitor now only updates items that were modified within the appropriate wizard.

In previous builds when adding a filter from within the configuration wizards new filters were not automatically assigned and/or selected when the user clicked the Select button within the Filters dialog box. The filter is now automatically assigned if not already assigned. Once assigned the filter is selected within the assigned filters list box.

When opening the Options dialog to configure the database from within the configuration wizards. The following bugs occurred. The syslog tab displayed. The database help was not displayed. These bugs have been fixed.

If monitoring a file from the end of the stream and the file was truncated, Text Log Monitor re-read the entire file rather than attempting to search backwards for the last line previously read within the newly truncated file.. This bug was recently introduced when another feature was added. This bug has been resolved.

This build includes an email limiter or spam control. To configure the email limiter select Options from the Tools menu item. From the Mail Connection tab, enable the email limiter and specify the maximum number of emails to fire and the period to apply the rules.

When appending lines to a scheduled report, users may have seen an index out of bounds error. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds all non-user interface actions were saved to a file called ‘actions’. This file is used by the tray icon to fire user interface alerts. Non-user interface actions were previously added to this file so we could someday add a user interface component that showed all actions fired. Since this functionality already exists in the tlm.log we decided to remove this functionality from the actions file possibly significantly decreasing the actions file size which in turn decreases the CPU foot print when the tray icon starts up.

In previous builds the monitoring service handled lines terminated with a carriage return line feed combination or a carriage return but did not properly handle files that were delimited with line feeds only. This bug has been fixed.

When monitoring a file that requires alternate login credentials the thread that receives the file changed callback was not re-impersonating before opening the file. If the calling thread did not have the alternate credentials already associated with it, the attempt to read the file may have failed. The sub-routine now forces impersonation prior to opening the file.

In previous builds when configuring an event log action users were unable to set the event ID larger than 100. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds, upon creating a new directory monitor, previous directory monitors without user friendly names assigned would no longer display the directory name within the tree view. This bug has been fixed.

When opening an empty file the viewer incorrectly display the line position percent. This bug has been fixed.

There were 2 significant impersonation bugs that were fixed. First, in previous builds users may not have been able to open files in the viewer if impersonation was required. Second, the service was unable to run scheduled reports on files if impersonation was required. Both these bugs have been fixed.

Users can now specify an exclusion time period to disable real-time monitoring. For example disable a real-time monitor between the hours of 1:00 AM-2:00 AM. Use either the File or Directory Configuration Wizard to specify the exclusion time period.

The text log monitor user interface now applies log entry delimiter settings when displaying a log file enabling each entry to display as a single line item rather than each line as a single line item. This is most useful when viewing entries than contain embedded CRLFs. This is also useful when viewing a file that does not contain CRLFs, for example, when viewing emergency broadcasting alerting system output.

When applying file output actions to monitored logs, users now have the option of backing up the previously written output file. This is most useful when scheduling, for example, a weekly report of all error entries within a target log file. The end result is an archive of files that contain weekly error reports.

The action items within the Action Manager dialog are now sorted alphabetically.

The directory monitor now supports date and time pattern matching enabling users to apply less than frequency rules to a directory that contains archived logs.

When creating a new directory monitor, the output window displayed an error about the net_name missing. This bug has been fixed.

If a report was configured to read from the end of the file, the first time the report ran the entire file was read. This bug has been fixed.

When separating email addresses with a semicolon followed by a space, the email function would attempt to send an email to an empty address. This bug has been fixed.

An obfuscation bug was recently introduced that rendered frequency detection inoperative. This bug has been fixed.

Since frequency detection was added, if a user added a filter or action to a file monitor configuration the changes would not take effect until the service was restarted. The directory monitor did not have this problem. This bug has been fixed.

Added frequency detection support to real-time monitors enabling administrators to receive notification when a log entry fails to fire within a specified frequency or fires more often than expected.

Made several minor changes to the help file.

In previous builds all non-user interface actions were saved to a file called ‘alerts’. This functionality was originally added so users could see all entries that caused an action to fire. To date user interface component has never added to enable users to see the action history. When monitoring many files this file could easily become MBs or even GBs large slowing down the server. The service no longer appends entries to this file unless a user interface action must be fired.

Made several updates to the help file.

Users can now save filtered entries to MySQL.

The message box alert now includes a View Log button that automatically opens Text Log Monitor and opens the log file referenced in the alert.

In previous builds, when syslogging to the localhost, the application syslog messages did not correctly bind to the local adapter. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds, if using a real-time directory monitor and reading the entire file, duplicate actions may have executed. This bug has been fixed.

The scheduler was updated to include exclusion periods for minute based schedules.

In previous builds the print function did nothing. This bug has been fixed. Text Log Monitor uses the ‘output.html’ template to produce a temporary HTML file. This file is then opened using the program associated with HTML documents. Users can create their own custom template that includes their corporate look and feel as well as which header values to print.

In previous builds the simple text email did not write out the log entries that passed the filter criteria. This bug has been fixed.

The help file was overhauled.

If you set the logical group back to unassigned via the wizard, the corresponding tree node was removed from the tree. This bug has been fixed.

The Actions Wizard did not save the vertical resize bar location. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds, when creating a new filter the user was required to click the new criteria button. The Actions Wizard now automatically creates the first criteria for the user.

The message box alert now enables users to set the font, font color, and background color.

In previous builds, when monitoring files or directories, there was no way to configure the service to read the entire file contents the first time the file was read. An option has been added to the File and Directory Monitor Wizards to enable this functionality.

In previous builds, there was no way to monitor a stream of data. Programs that stream output to file without line feeds could not be monitored. This limitation has been resolved.

The message box alert did not display the message box as the top most window. This bug has been fixed.

When selecting the Local Disks tree node, all child nodes were re-loaded causing all expanded directories to collapse. This bug has been fixed.

The message box alert maintains alert history. In previous builds the list was never truncated causing memory to leak. This bug has been fixed.

System administrators can now configure Text Log Monitor to run a process when a log entry passes filter criteria.

Added numerous new action types. Actions are now created stand-alone and then assigned to files.

Added tray icon.

In the previous version you could not specify filter criteria to remove empty lines. This limitation has been resolved.

Added a Configure Actions toolbar button.

In the previous version the < and > characters were not escaped with sent via email or exported to HTML. This bug has been fixed.

Users can now rename logical groups and monitors by pressing F2.

When configuring a new directory to monitor, the system browse folder dialog is now used.

In previous builds the network, local drives, and mapped drivers were always expanded. These tree nodes are now collapsed at startup.

Users can now create time based filters enabling messages that are received during maintenance hours to be ignored.

Re-vamped viewer to use background threads to read files.

On certain systems update installations and un-installations would fail due to a system library missing. This bug has been fixed.

Text Log Monitor was originally designed to monitor files that were appended to rather than replaced. Users can now configure files to be read in their entirety form the beginning when ever a file is changed. This function is invaluable when attempting to monitor log files that are replaced through backup, archive or a scheduled process.

Filtering has been totally overhauled. You can now create nested search criteria that includes support for AND, OR, and NOT criteria.

After pressing Enter, while adding a search mask from the Directory Monitor Wizard, the mask is now automatically added to the list of search masks.

In previous builds, if you created a new monitor for a file that was already being monitored, the previous configuration would be removed. The configuration wizard now notifies the user the file is already being monitored.

A rare but potential deadlock was able to have occurred during shutdown. This bug has been fixed.

The viewer was not properly clearing entries from the viewer as it scrolled. This bug has been fixed.

The installation executable and all Corner Bowl Software developed binaries are now digitally signed.

On Windows Vista, the installation would install the shortcuts with Standard rights even though the program requires administrator privileges. This bug has been fixed.

When running on Windows Vista, the software would send the IP address instead of the domain in the HELO or EHLO commands. Since Vista defaults to IPv6, the command would fail. The behavior has been changed to send the domain as required by the RFC 821 rather of the IP address.

The cached number of viewable entries used to be 3 times the viewable number of entries. The multiplier has been changed to 10.

In previous builds, Text Log Monitor only supported SQL Server authentication. The application now supports both SQL Server and Windows Authentication modes. Use the Options dialog to set the login preference. Please note, the Text Log Monitor service must be running with appropriate Windows credentials to properly connect.

Updated remote disk shares icon.

Updated and added several service log messages.

If multiple lines are written to a file at the same time, prior builds would fire a separate email for each line that passed filter criteria. Text Log Monitor now only sends one email that includes all filtered lines.

Text Log Monitor now enables users save the current view to a file. This function enables users to open a file, optionally apply a filter, and lastly, save the filtered file to another file.

If a log file entry contained multiple carriage returns followed by a line feed the following error was thrown: File watcher error: Index and count must refer to a location within the string. This bug has been fixed.

In previous builds users on networks that utilize HTTP proxy servers were unable to register the software and receive automatic product updates. Once the proxy server is set via the registration dialog, users now receive automatic updates.

Updated several tree view icons and fixed several tree view bugs

Text Log Monitor now enables users to monitor files that contain incrementing numbers or dates within the filename. To configure these types of files, select the directory that contains the files and select Directory Monitor Wizard from the File menu.

When the viewer maximized multiple logs and all logs were being tailed, sometimes a window that was put in the background would shut down its tail thread. This bug has been fixed.

If entries were added while the monitor was off or during re-boot, log entries would not be captured. Entries written while the service is off are now captured.

Recent file list continued to grow. The list is now limited to 10 files.

When fixing some viewer bugs related to tailing, a bug was introduced when restoring the viewer to the desktop. This bug has been fixed.

If a computer that contained a file that was being monitored was offline, the viewer would throw an error at startup and exit. This bug has been fixed.

The previous builds were unable to view or monitor Unicode text files. Both the viewer and the service are now able to monitor Unicode files.

The service used to syslog all internal messages generated by the service to the local syslogger. The service no longer syslogs these messages unless the user specifically turns on syslogging. Use the Options dialog to turn on service syslogging. This change in no way effects monitored file action output.

There were several bugs in the viewer that caused errors to be thrown. These bugs have been fixed.

Previously there was no way to cancel out of the Configuration Wizard dialog without first creating a valid configurations for all selected files. A Cancel button has been added to the Configuration Wizard dialog.

Fixed several bugs related the viewer while tailing files.

When a configuration was disabled, the service would continually start and stop monitoring. This bug has been fixed.

The viewer would hang when attempting to apply a filter that returned fewer lines than the viewer was able to display on the screen. This bug has been fixed.

The viewer’s file navigation code had several performance deficiencies. These deficiencies have been resolved.

Added recent files menu item support.