Searching unix files from a windows machine - how to?

Strandlope

Hallo, I am trying to find a tool - preferable freeware, but I am willing to pay if needs be - that can:
- Enable windows users (Windows 7)
- To connect to a unix server
- Preferably with read-only user access
- And search for a string within text files that are stored in a logs directory
- Using a GUI interface
- So that they can find which Log file to copy across to their windows machine using a tool like Filezilla (which they already use)

Note:
- The logs directory constantly has new log files being created
- There are many logs directories that they may connect to, depending on which system/project they are working on, so connection has to be simple
- The windows users have no experience in the UNIX command line
- I could try to teach them, but it will take time and they could cause some accidental damage operating at the command line

Any suggestions are welcome

Mort5000

Try this one:

MythicSoft Agent Ransack

croo

X windows always seems to complicated because it was designed to allow applications to run on a server but display on a different client... but the good news is that then it can do things like you want.

Putty will, I believe, allow you to run any X app locally on windows. the web is full of examples like this
http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/XoverSSH/X-over-SSH2.html

Next you need to find a linux gui app that will allow you to search files as you wish... and setup putty to run it to test.

Strandlope

Thanks Croo, I will check this out and post back.

Strandlope

Thanks Mort5000, I will check this out and post back.

croo

Strandlope wrote: »

Thanks Croo, I will check this out and post back.

Actually on a closer look putty will only provide part of the solution ... the secure tunnel - which may or may not be a requirement. You still need a Xserver for windows. I've not used any but SourceForge has afew open source options including http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/ which seems to offer just what's needed.

Strandlope

Thanks Croo & Mort5000,

I checked out both options.

Agent Ransack: Worked well on windows machine, but could not get it installed on the unix server, or get it to connect to the unix server from the windows machines.

For the Xserver/Linux GUI approach, our tech team unfortunately canned the idea (setup/maintenance/time being the main reasons).

In the end we wrote a progress/unix app that displays a browse of results and emails the file selected to the current user. It's not pretty but it does the job.

Thanks again for your help.