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This must've been done before: I want to keep a log file open in terminal so I can monitor updates to it as they occur. My searches are coming up with everything but this situation... I must be missing some terminology or something key, because people do this all the time inside of other programs (NetBeans, or rails server, for example).

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Ah, I've found it. tail -f myfile.log. That does it nicely. I love linux. – wulftone May 20 '11 at 19:23
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Try with:

tail -f your.log

where -f stands for follow.

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up vote 2 down vote

Another way:

watch tail -n20 your.log

OK, kind of a silly use of watch - but you might find the watch command useful for other things.

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The watch option is better for files that are going to be renamed/removed and recreated (either by normal operation or by something like logrotate) during the time you are watching, otherwise tail -f is more efficient. – David Spillett May 20 '11 at 20:07
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@David: tail -F handles that. – grawity May 21 '11 at 10:11
@grawity: Thanks, you learn something new every day! – David Spillett May 21 '11 at 11:25
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