Gaim-Log-Mailer

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Gaim::Log::Mailer 0.02
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NAME

Gaim::Log::Mailer - Have your Gaim/Pidgin logs mailed to you

SYNOPSIS

        use Gaim::Log::Mailer;
        my $mailer = Gaim::Log::Mailer->new();
        $mailer->process();

        # ~/.gaimlogmailer.yml
         logfile:  /tmp/gaimlogmailer.log
         email_to: foo@bar.com
         min_age:  3600
         throttle_interval:   3600
         throttle_max_emails: 10

DESCRIPTION

Have you ever wanted to look at the content of an IM conversation you had earlier? But you couldn't, because you had the conversation on a different system than the one you're using now? You need to centralize your Gaim/Pidgin logs.

Gaim::Log::Mailer figures out if you have new IM conversations in your Gaim log directory and mails them to your account, so you have them available in your email, which you can check, wherever you are.

This module comes with a script "gaimlogmailer" which just reads in a YAML configuration file (usually ~/.gaimlogmailer.yml>, then processes availabe logs up to an adjustable threshold, sends them nicely formatted to the specified email address and then exits.

It is recommended that you run this script in a cronjob, to make sure all new IM conversations are picked up and forwarded. For example, here's a cronjob that runs "gaimlogmailer" every hour on the 13th

minute

        $ crontab -l
        13 * * * * /path/to/gaimlogmailer

Configuration
The configuration file "~/.gaimlogmailer.yml" specifies a number of parameters that "gaimlogmailer" needs to operate. They are given in YAML format, which basically just means

        # comment
        key: value

and comment lines are ignored. Strings need to be enclosed in quotes. For details on this format, check http://yaml.org.

Here are the parameters in detail:

email_to

(Mandatory) The email address the script sends the log to.

logfile

        (Optional) The log file where the script logs all activity, using
        Log4perl.

            logfile: "/tmp/gaimlogmailer.log"

        (Note the quotes, YAML insists on them here).

min_age

        (Optional, defaults to 3600). The minimum number of seconds a log
        file needs to stay untouched by the Gaim application before the
        mailer processes it. Reason for this is that there is no way to
        figure out if Gaim is done writing a log file or if it will still
        append to it at some point.

        The mailer knows this and won't mail a file that has a modification
        date younger than "min_age" seconds in the past to make sure no
        half-written log files are processed. However, this method isn't
        bullet-proof, and the mailer deals with this situation: if the
        mailer notices that an already processed file has new data, it will
        process it again. This way, you'll get two emails, so make sure this
        happens rarely and choose min_age accordingly and wisely.

throttle_interval

        (Optional, defaults to 3600/10). A new installation of gaimlogmailer
        might find thousands of logfiles which need to be mailed out one by
        one. To avoid overwhelming the mail system or triggering spam
        filters, the number of emails can be limited to
        "throttle_max_emails" per "throttle_interval".

        For example, if you want gaimlogmailer to only send a maximum of 10
        emails per hour, set

            throttle_interval:   3600
            throttle_max_emails: 10

        in your configuration file. Even if the script is rate-limited in
        this way, it'll pick up slowly and handle all logs eventually.

throttle_max_emails

See "throttle_interval".

exclude_words

A list of blank-separated words

            # configuration file
            exclude_words: maybe thanks thx doesn hey put already

languages

A blank-separated list of languages the term extractor should try.

            # Try English and German
            languages: en de

Mail Preferences
Gaim::Log::Mailer uses Mail::DWIM to send out mail. By default, it uses a sendmail daemon on the local machine, if you want something else, you can change the local .maildwim file and specify a different transport (e.g. SMTP). See the Mail::DWIM documentation for details.

References
This module is based on an article I wrote for the German Linux Magazine, where IM logs were sent to an IMAP server: http://www.linux-magazin.de/heft_abo/ausgaben/2007/06/gespraechsprotokol le

LEGALESE

AUTHOR

2008, Mike Schilli <cpan@perlmeister.com>