Linux command line utility for watching log files live?

Question

What's a good linux command line utility for watching a log file live? It's probably obvious but I totally forgot it.

Peter Loron · Answer 1 · 2011-01-05 23:37:59Z

up vote 11 down vote accepted

There are two things that leap immediately to mind...

tail -f

or

multitail

answered Jan 5 '11 at 23:37

thank you sir. I'll give ya the answer since Linker3000 has so many points, but I still appreciate the help! – kylehotchkiss Jan 6 '11 at 1:25

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Linker3000 · Answer 2 · 2011-01-05 23:38:06Z

up vote 6 down vote

Assuming you are in the same folder as the logfile:

tail -f logfilename

answered Jan 5 '11 at 23:38

Linker3000
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Julien Palard · Answer 3 · 2012-04-01 10:44:58Z

If you want to watch a specific aspect of your file, say just IPs in an access log, you can do :

tail -f your_file | cut -d' ' -f1 | logtop

assuming that IPs are the first column of your log file.

3 Answers