clp-text quick-start#

This page will walk you through how to start CLP and use it to compress and search unstructured text logs.

Caution

If you’re using a clp-text release, you should only compress unstructured text logs. clp-text is able to compress and search JSON logs as if they were unstructured text, but clp-text cannot query individual fields. This limitation will be addressed in a future version of CLP.

Starting CLP#

To start CLP, run:

sbin/start-clp.sh

Note

If CLP fails to start (e.g., due to a port conflict), try adjusting the settings in etc/clp-config.yml and then run the start command again.

Compressing unstructured text logs#

To compress some unstructured text logs, run:

sbin/compress.sh <path1> [<path2> ...]

<path...> are paths to unstructured text log files or directories containing such files.

The compression script will output the compression ratio of each dataset you compress, or you can use the UI to view overall statistics.

Compressed logs will be stored in the directory specified by the archive_output.storage.directory config option in etc/clp-config.yml (archive_output.storage.directory defaults to var/data/archives).

Sample logs#

For some sample logs, check out the open-source datasets.

Searching unstructured text logs#

You can search your compressed logs from CLP’s UI or the command line.

In clp-text, queries are written as wildcard expressions. A wildcard expression is a plain text query where:

  • * matches zero or more characters

  • ? matches any single character

For example, consider the query in Figure 1 and the logs in Figure 2.

"INFO container_? Transitioned*ACQUIRED"

Figure 1: An example query.

2015-03-23T15:50:17.926Z INFO container_1 Transitioned from ALLOCATED to ACQUIRED
2015-03-23T15:50:17.927Z ERROR Scheduler: Error trying to assign container token
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: java.net.UnknownHostException: i-e5d112ea
    at org.apache.hadoop.security.buildTokenService(SecurityUtil.java:374)
    at org.apache.hadoop.ipc.Server$Handler.run(Server.java:2033)
Caused by: java.net.UnknownHostException: i-e5d112ea
    ... 17 more

Figure 2: A set of unstructured text log events.

The query in Figure 1 will match with the first log message, as the ? will match the character “1”, and the * will match the text “ from ALLOCATED to “.

A complete reference for clp-text’s query syntax is available on the syntax reference page.

Searching from the UI#

To search your compressed logs from CLP’s UI, open http://localhost:4000 in your browser (if you changed webui.host or webui.port in etc/clp-config.yml, use the new values).

../../_images/clp-search-ui.png

The image above shows the search page after running a query. The numbered circles correspond to the following features:

  1. The search box is where you can enter your query.

  2. The timeline shows the number of results across the time range of your query.

    • You can click and drag to zoom into a time range, or use the time range filter in (4).

  3. The table displays the search results for your query.

  4. Clicking the icon reveals additional filters for your query.

    • The time range filter allows you to specify the period of time that matching log events must be in.

    • The case sensitivity filter allows you to specify whether CLP should respect the case of your query.

  5. Clicking the icon reveals options for displaying results.

  6. The icon clears the results of the last query.

Note

By default, the UI will only return 1,000 of the latest search results. To perform searches which return more results, use the command line.

Searching from the command line#

To search your compressed logs from the command line, run:

sbin/search.sh '<query>'

To narrow your search to a specific time range:

  • Add --begin-time <epoch-timestamp-millis> to filter for log events after a certain time.

    • <epoch-timestamp-millis> is the timestamp as milliseconds since the UNIX epoch.

  • Add --end-time <epoch-timestamp-millis> to filter for log events before a certain time.

To perform case-insensitive searches, add the --ignore-case flag.

Caution

To match the convention of other tools, by default, searches are case-insensitive in the UI and searches are case-sensitive on the command line.

Stopping CLP#

If you need to stop CLP, run:

sbin/stop-clp.sh