The Lire package is targeted at automatically generating useful reports from raw log files from various services. Currently, Lire can generate reports for a variety of email, web, dns, ftp, print servers and firewalls, and supports multiple output formats. Lire is developed by the Stichting LogReport Foundation, more information about the project can be found on http://www.logreport.org/.

Lire is built around the concept of a superservice. A superservice is a class of applications which share the same reports. Lire supports 6 superservices: dns, email, firewall, ftp, print and www. This means that log files for all supported email servers (service in Lire's parlance) will get similar reports. This is important for heterogeneous environments where you could have e.g. Sendmail and Postfix mail servers running. You will get similar reports which you can compare.

Lire can run in an online responder setup, as a client, as a cron driven system, or as a command line driven system. In an online responder setup, the Lire system receives emails containing log files from other hosts and sends generated reports back by email. In a client setup, the system sends log files by email to another Lire system which runs an online responder and receives reports back. Optionally, the log files can be anonymized before being sent. A cron driven setup reads and processes log files after they're rotated, on the local host. In a command line driven system, users run the Lire scripts on an ad-hoc basis.