loco is a Perl script which gives the messages file (usually /var/log/messages) some color, so the output is easier to read. It uses a Perl module called Term::ANSIColor to produce the colors. The Perl script is very readable and customizable.

You could tail messages file and pipe to loco like this: tail -f /var/log/messages | loco

Let’s see how it would look like without loco:

Or you could call the whole messages file with loco: loco /var/log/messages

Lets look at other logfiles with loco: /var/log/auth.log

/var/log/rkhunter.log (log file for rootkit hunter program)