Mac OS X Kext Logging for Fun and Profit

Kernel extensions in Mac OS X ("kexts") log to the file /var/log/kernel.log which is backed up somewhat infrequently. On my machine, I have backed up logs dating from 6 months ago at the latest. Since my machine usage is probably very anti-correlated with my sleeping, I decided to use kext logging to plot my sleep schedule as a function of time.

This is sort of a response to http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/ but using my own machine's tools and data without relying on external services for data collection, analysis, and visualization.

Requirements

awk, python, numpy, matplotlib

Usage

At the moment, while logged in as peter, running

./generate
./plot.py

will put the logs in a directory peter, run the awk script on the logs, and then display a 2D histogram.

Example

Here's the histogram for my own logs going back to September 3, 2011:

TODO

• The python log parsing script is a lot faster than the awk script, but there's a problem with getting the right timezone. I'll figure it out another time.
• There's no persistence. I think what it should do is save your new logfiles every time you call ./generate or whatever it becomes.