Question

I am using config parser to parse a config file I need to tail each file in the files section in a separate terminal I am using python on mac

the code I wrote gets me all the things in the files section I need only the paths and need to tail each one of them in a separate child process

import ConfigParser

    import os

def ConfigSectionMap(section):
    dict1 = {}
    options = Config.options(section)
    for option in options:
        try:
            dict1[option] = Config.get(section, option)
            if dict1[option] == -1:
                DebugPrint("skip: %s" % option)
        except:
            print("exception on %s!" % option)
            dict1[option] = None
    return dict1

Config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
Config.read("/etc/harvest.conf")
print Config.sections()
print ConfigSectionMap("files")

sample config file is

[section1] host_prefix = true

timestamp_prefix = true

[section2] host = localhost

port = 1463

pids = /var/run/harvester

[files] apache.access = /var/log/apache2/access.log

apache.errors = /var/log/apache2/errors.log

mail = /var/log/mail.log

mysql.log = /var/log/mysql.log

mysql.err = /var/log/mysql.err

syslog.err = /var/log/syslog.err

Answer 1

Since tail is accepting multiple files, you can rely on it:

from ConfigParser import ConfigParser
from subprocess import Popen

config = ConfigParser()
config.read('/etc/harvest.conf')
filenames = [value for name, value in config.items('files')]

process = Popen(['tail', '-f'] + filenames)
process.communicate()