Chapter 1. Introducing Lire
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## Chapter 1. Introducing Lire

## What Is Lire?

The Lire package is targeted at automatically generating useful reports from raw log files from various services. Currently, Lire can generate reports for a variety of email, web, dns, ftp, print servers and firewalls, and supports multiple output formats. Lire is developed by the Stichting LogReport Foundation, more information about the project can be found on http://www.logreport.org/.

Lire is built around the concept of a superservice. A superservice is a class of applications which share the same reports. Lire supports many superservices like dns, email, firewall, ftp, print and www. This means that log files for all supported email servers (service in Lire's parlance) will get similar reports. This is important for heterogeneous environments where you could have e.g. Sendmail™ and Postfix™ mail servers running. You will get similar reports which you can compare.

Lire is also very modular. Most of its features are based on plugins. For example, each output formats and log formats are supported via a plugin. If you can program perl, it is very easy to develop a plugin. You should consult the Lire Developer's Manual for all the information.

Lire can be used as a log database system (called a DLF Store). In this setup you configure periodical importation of log data and periodical generation of reports from that log data.

There are also commands that can be use to generate, mege and formats reports on an on an ad-hoc basis.

The Lire distribution also includes a bunch of shell scripts which enable to set up an online responder system. In this setup, the Lire system receives emails containing log files from other hosts and sends generated reports back by email. Optionally, the log files can be anonymized before being sent.

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