title: need to read data from a log... tail, grep and inotifywait
body: <p>I have data on one server that comes into a continuously growing log file. I need to tail that log and grep some information and then send that to another server for php to insert into a database. The computer that has the log can't be allowed access to the database. I tried this so far but my syntax on the bash command is wrong and I can't figure out if this is the way to do it or if there would be a better way? Netcat was another thought...</p>
  
  <h2>monitor.sh</h2>
  
  <pre><code>#!/bin/sh
  
  tail -f /usr/local/log/thelog.log | grep -B1 "ABC=" &gt; /usr/local/log/output.log;  
  
  while inotifywait -e modify /usr/local/log/output.log; do
  sleep 10;  
  php /usr/bin/send.php;  
  done
  </code></pre>
  
  <h2>send.php</h2>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  //extract data from the post
  //extract($_POST);
  //set POST variables
  
  $data = 'tail -n 3 /usr/local/log/output.log';
  $url = 'http://www.blahblah.com/logtodb.php';
  
  $data = str_replace("A", "", $data);
  $data = str_replace("B=", "", $data);
  $data = str_replace("C=", "", $data);
  $data = str_replace("D=", "", $data);
  
  $fields = array(
  'data'=&gt;urlencode($data)d,
  );
  
  //url-ify the data for the POST
  foreach($fields as $key=&gt;$value) { $fields_string .= $key.'='.$value.'&amp;'; }
  rtrim($fields_string,'&amp;');
  
  //open connection
  $ch = curl_init();
  
  //set the url, number of POST vars, POST data
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_URL,$url);
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POST,count($fields));
  curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS,$fields_string);
  
     //execute post
     $result = curl_exec($ch);
  
     //close connection
     curl_close($ch);
     A&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>logtodb.php reads the post</p>