Built a CMTrace-style log viewer for macOS

Posted by Nervous-Equivalent@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 13 comments

Anyone else miss CMTrace and when they're troubleshooting a Mac workstation? When I had to start supporting MacOS at work I really missed CMTrace and Support Center OneTrace. Easily spotting errors, combining logs into one pane, per-source filter, etc. Eventually I decided to try making my own log-viewer on MacOS. Hopefully some of ya'll can get some use out of it.

It's free, open-source, and notarized. I'm actively adding features and polish (v1.0.4 just went up an hour ago).

GitHub: https://github.com/thefinder808/TraceView

Let me know if it saves you some time!

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Tall_Significance294@reddit

How one gets to supporting MacOS devices? Apart from personal computers I've rarely seen any enterprise environments with MacOS devices used en masse

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Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)

First you get executives that request one, then you get devs that want a physical Mac for XCode, then normal users see people walking around with MacBooks...the rest is history.

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arlissed@reddit

The place I’ve worked at for decades was all Windows, originally. I suggested adding a Mac or two. About 5 years later the place went 100% Mac (still is)

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Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)

Which MDM do you use?

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drthtater@reddit

Not the one you asked, but I used JAMF when I supported macs. Expensive, but the best

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Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)

Yeah we couldn't fit JAMF into the budget, but I'm pretty happy with Mosyle. Their documentation is terrible, but luckily most JAMF docs can be used for Mosyle if you squint hard enough.

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arlissed@reddit

SimpleMDM. I went with it as it used munki for app updates/delivery (and I had been using that internally for years.)

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PhinPack1990@reddit

Nice! I'll give it a whirl tomorrow in the office. I've got an WS1 app that isn't behaving lately

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HappyDadOfFourJesus@reddit

What ever needs troubleshooting on a MacOS system???

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Nervous-Equivalent@reddit (OP)

Ha! It can feel pretty shaky sometimes managing MacOS workstations via MDM, I run into a lot of hiccups with Filevault, VPP app deployments, you name it. I'm sure I'm not the best Mac Admin in the world though, always more to learn.

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idle_handz@reddit

This sounds like a response an r/shittysysadmin would make. Post this over on r/macsysadmin. Install.log comes to mind the most or just going through the contents of a sysdiagnose.

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Quinnlos@reddit

MDM not deploying applications/profiles properly for one.

Filevault escrowing issues

General user issues

Coalescing error logs for applications that generally don't store error logs in a consistent location whatsoever.