0

Here at work one of our server have created a log file of 32 Gigabytes. we need to open it in order to know what happened, But all the text editor that I tried have said that the file is too large and it doesn't open.

we have found some alternative text editor to notepad or notepad++, but even those have a limit of 5GB.

we have also tried a software which split the file in small files. Log Splitter it's called, but the issue is that we have 4GB left of space on the hard drive and for that reason the Log Splitter is not able to process the split.

Any suggestion on how to open this file?

Thank you in advance

Huander
  • 71
  • 2
  • 11
  • 1
    See [this](http://stackoverflow.com/q/102829/395718) question about text editors that can easily open text files larger than 4GB. – Dialecticus Aug 05 '15 at 10:39
  • In essence, [glogg](http://glogg.bonnefon.org/) is fine, being free [BareTail](https://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/) with search feature. Just make sure you use "search" functionality (Alt+T to enter text), instead of "find" (Ctrl+F), which should really be called "highlight". And disable "Incremental QuickFind" option in options in case you use highlight, because it will freeze the GUI when you mistype, when you might want to kill the process to quickly recover. – Dialecticus Aug 05 '15 at 11:03
  • Check similar question https://stackoverflow.com/questions/159521/text-editor-to-open-big-giant-huge-large-text-files – Arnis Juraga Apr 29 '18 at 11:12
  • We get into a situation where log file accumulated to 6GB and need to search by date or string. Few well known text editor could support for such a big file. Found joe editor which able to load my file of 6GB in 2 mins and enabled to explore the file. https://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/files/JOE%20for%20Windows/ – praaveen V R May 05 '18 at 06:48
  • I'm working a lot with log files and missed always some functions -- so I wrote a viewer also supporting huge files; search etc... . Have a try at I'm working a lot with log files and missed always some functions -- so I wrote a viewer also supporting huge files, search, highlighting etc... . Have a try here [loxx](http://www.mommos-software.com/index.php?/loxx) -- any feedback is welcome! – mommos Sep 23 '19 at 14:14

3 Answers3

1

I am assuming you are using some kind windows server based on your tags. You can use the commandline utility "more filename" to open the file. In fact the utility "more" is also available on many linux distributions.

This command will print one page text on the console and will wait for the user to press Enter before it shows the next page.

The more command also has parameter that can be passed on call and some that can be passed while watching a file, e.g. skipping n lines.

Here is a website with a documentation about more: http://www.computerhope.com/morehlp.htm

Jan Pflugmacher
  • 46
  • 1
  • 5
  • 1
    Yes, we are using windows server 2008 r2. – Huander Aug 05 '15 at 10:25
  • I will try that command, but what does it actually do? – Huander Aug 05 '15 at 10:26
  • Thank you @Jan Pflugmacher, it have worked. I wanted to see the latest activities, because there are thousands of line would be better if I could see it from the end to the begin. Do you know if that is possible on the command line? – Huander Aug 05 '15 at 10:49
1

Give BareTail a try. They specifically cite as one of its features "View files of any size (> 2GB)", so it should handle your conundrum perfectly. http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/

The basic version is free and you can easily scan the file at any point, create filters to highlight events... all in a nice GUI. The Pro version ($25) offers some better search features and additional display filters.

Or you could go with a Windows port of Tail itself...

http://tailforwin32.sourceforge.net/

Either would be perfect for getting that last 100 lines, or so, of logfile that you need to see issues that just happened.

FatPanda
  • 26
  • 3
  • Thank you @FatPanda, How to see file from the end? At the moment I am seing just the first 100 lines, I would like to see the last 100 lines! – Huander Aug 06 '15 at 08:22
1

http://wxHexEditor.org is a beautiful Open Source hex editor that I have used to edit .vhdx files slightly larger that 64 terabytes (data + metadata).

Patrick T Anderson
  • 39
  • 2