Dev tools · September 21, 2023
My Single-File Python Script I Used to Replace Splunk in My Startup
My immediate reaction to today's news that Splunk was being acquired was to comment in the HN discussion for that story: "I hated Splunk so much that I spent a couple days a few months ago writing a single 1200 line python script that does absolutely everything I need in terms of automatic log collection, ingestion, and analysis from a fleet of cloud instances. It pulls in all the log lines, enriches them with useful metadata like the IP address of the instance, the machine name, the log source, the datetime, etc. and stores it all in SQlite, which it then exposes to a very convenient web…
My Single-File Python Script I Used to Replace Splunk in My Startup launched on September 21, 2023 with 313 votes, #97 of 4,228 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.
In plain words
This tool is a Python script designed for startups that need log collection, ingestion, and analysis across cloud instances. It automatically gathers log lines from a fleet of machines, enriches them with metadata like IP addresses and instance names, and stores everything in SQLite. The logs are then viewable through a web interface powered by Datasette. The script is lightweight at 1,200 lines, runs via cron job, and is free, offering an alternative to commercial log management platforms.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Replace Splunk in your small company with this one weird trick! - Dicklesworthstone/automatic_log_collector_and_analyzer
In the maker’s words, at launch
My immediate reaction to today's news that Splunk was being acquired was to comment in the HN discussion for that story: "I hated Splunk so much that I spent a couple days a few months ago writing a single 1200 line python script that does absolutely everything I need in terms of automatic log collection, ingestion…
Does a similar job
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- SDSplunk Developer Platform (what I've been working on)2011 · dev.splunk.com · ▲12
Hey HN, I wanted to share with you what I've been working on for the past few months – the Splunk Developer Platform[1]. We released our Python SDK[2] back in August, but just last week we released our Java[3] and JavaScript[4] ones, and the JS SDK was the one I've been working on. It was a great learning experience for me – first real foray into JavaScript and Node (the SDK works in both the browser and Node), and was a lot of fun to try different things out releasing it. I ended up building on a couple of open source libraries (and contributing back). We are building out Splunk's developer…
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Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
