Additionally I ran into "annotate-output" today. NAME annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream
DESCRIPTION annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for stderr. EXAMPLE $ annotate-output make 21:41:21 I: Started make 21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c 21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out 21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status 21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1 21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2 Since you mentioned Debian I will note that it is packaged for Debian in the devscripts packaged. It seems to be an enhanced version of: http://jeroen.a-eskwadraat.nl/sw/annotate Bob