Simple shell script to help flushing IIS logs on Windows/cygwin

iis-log-flusher.sh

#!/bin/bash

if ! net session > /dev/null 2>&1; then
 echo "This tool must be run under Administrator privileges."
 exit 1
fi

function flush() {
 netsh http flush logbuffer
}

function burst() {
 local resp i
 if [ "${1}" == keypress ]; then
  echo -n "Flushing until keypress: "
  while true; do
   flush > /dev/null 2>&1
   echo -n "."
   if read -sn1 -t1 resp; then
    echo ", key pressed. Interrupting."
    return 0
   fi
  done
 elif [[ "${1}" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
  echo -n "Flushing every second, ${1} times: "
  for ((i=0; i<${1}; i++)); do
   flush > /dev/null 2>&1
   echo -n "."
   sleep 1
  done
  echo " done flushing."
  return 0
 else
  echo "Invalid or missing argument to burst()."
  return 1
 fi
}

while true; do
 echo -n "Let's flush IIS logs:

b) burst of 10 times over 10 seconds
B) burst of 60 times over 1 minute
x) flush every second until a key is pressed
q) quit
Any other key) flush once
> "
 read -sn1 resp

 case "${resp}" in
  b) echo "burst 10x over 10s"; burst 10;;
  B) echo "burst 60x over 60s"; burst 60;;
  x) echo "keep flushing until keypress"; burst keypress;;
  q) echo "quit."; break;;
  *) flush;;
 esac
done

Motivation for this script is to help flush IIS logs when debugging applications where, for instance, we want to log errors/warnings (using response.appendToLog()) to IIS logs.

Especially in light traffic environments like the development workstations, IIS usually takes a long time to flush requests to their logfiles in c:/inetpub/logs/LogFiles/W3SVC<N>/u_ex<date>.log. This script helps "bursting" the flush interval when we want to immediately check the outcome of a request IIS handled, e.g. by monitoring the log file.

This was produced and tested in cygwin environment. The script can be copied to somewhere in path so it can be run just by typing iis-log-flusher.sh in the command prompt.

This script probably works in git-bash-here (from git for windows) and WSL.