Questions tagged [tail]

Unix command to view the end of a file

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225 votes
4 answers
56k views

Using watch with pipes

I'd like to run this command: watch -n 1 tail -n 200 log/site_dev.log | grep Doctrine But it does not run, because "I think" that the grep tries to run on the watch instead of the tail... Is there ...
Tommy B.'s user avatar
  • 2,599
197 votes
14 answers
210k views

Is it possible to `tail -f` the output of `dmesg`?

I want to do something like dmesg | tail -f but it doesn't work: I use Mac OS X v10.6.7 (Snow Leopard). By doing that, tail will exit, instead of monitoring the output. I wonder if there is a ...
Ivan Xiao's user avatar
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86 votes
22 answers
150k views

Monitoring a file until a string is found

I am using tail -f to monitor a log file that is being actively written to. When a certain string is written to the log file, I want to quit the monitoring, and continue with the rest of my script. ...
Alex Hofsteede's user avatar
86 votes
6 answers
84k views

Opposite of tail: all lines except the last n lines

How can I discard the last n lines of a file with a unix command line filter? That would be sort of the opposite of tail: tail discards the first n lines but pipes the rest through, but I want the ...
Dr. Hans-Peter Störr's user avatar
62 votes
6 answers
10k views

Alternative for "tail -f" that follows filename

I have some logs being generated using a timed rotating file logger. This logs to a file called tool.log, and at midnight, moves this to tool.log.<date> and starts a new tool.log. I have a tail ...
Hugh's user avatar
  • 1,201
36 votes
3 answers
19k views

make tail wait for a file to exist

tail -f bar/somefile.log would fail immediately when somefile.log does not exist. How do I make tail indefinitely wait for that file to be created (which will happen in a few moments)? Update: using -...
Sridhar Ratnakumar's user avatar
32 votes
1 answer
58k views

Combine tail -f with grep?

Hi I wanna keep looking at a log file, but I also don't wanna see irrelevant stuff, I'm only interested in anything with "foobar" in it. So if I was tailing the file I would do tail file | grep "...
user893730's user avatar
  • 1,217
26 votes
3 answers
12k views

tail -f not tracking file changes

I was recently looking into using tail -f to monitor some text files like so: tail -f /var/sometext. However, when I did some testing, it doesn't seem to work. What I did was I created a new file ...
user avatar
24 votes
4 answers
19k views

Using 'head' or 'tail' on HUGE text file - 19 GB

I have a problem with viewing chunks of a very large text file. This file, approximately 19 GB, is obviously too big to view by any traditional means. I have tried head 1 and tail 1 (head -n 1 ...
nicorellius's user avatar
  • 6,715
23 votes
2 answers
29k views

tail/head all line except X last/first Lines

for example i have this file : cat myfile 1 2 3 4 5 i want to print all lines except first 2 line . output should be like this : tail -n $(( $(wc -l myfile | awk '{print $1}') - 2 )) myfile 3 4 5 ...
network's user avatar
  • 341
22 votes
9 answers
22k views

Windows XP equivalent of "tail -f"?

Is there way have windows XP show me updates to a log file as they happen? I'm thinking of something similar to tail -f <file path> in the linux realm.
Mike B's user avatar
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19 votes
4 answers
3k views

Linux command line log viewer which allows auto tail AND searching?

I use tail -f in my Linux shell, to view log files, as I like how it auto-updates with the incoming text: I like to see the new stuff come scrolling in. However, I also like the search functionality ...
Max Williams's user avatar
  • 2,989
19 votes
4 answers
13k views

appending timestamp to tail -f results

I would like to have a timestamp printed in front of every line that comes out of a "tail -f outputfile", so that I know when is each line printed in. Something like: [...] 20110617_070222:results ...
719016's user avatar
  • 4,337
14 votes
2 answers
12k views

Equivalent of 'clear' command when using tail -f

I am using the tail -f command to follow an error log, and I often want to "clear" the terminal, much in the same way that the clear unix command moves everything above the top of the window. Is there ...
AndyPerlitch's user avatar
12 votes
3 answers
2k views

Stop scrolling to the bottom automatically in PuTTY

I am using tail -f to monitor a file via PuTTY. But each time new content arrives then it automatically scrolls to the bottom and so I can't read the text. Is there a way to make it stop that ...
Black's user avatar
  • 7,881
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

Is there a tail -f equivalent for ls?

Basically the question is in the title. I want to monitor a directory for new files that are written or deleted, the way I can monitor a log file with tail -f. Is this possible?
Alex's user avatar
  • 1,853
7 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why isn't `tail -f … | grep -q …` quitting when it finds a match?

I'm doing a pretty standard tail + grep: tail -f some_log_file.txt | grep -q known-string If I run the command without the -q: tail -f some_log_file.txt | grep known-string I see output: [Tue Feb ...
machineghost's user avatar
  • 1,092
7 votes
3 answers
8k views

multitail for Windows cmd/powershell? [closed]

Is there a program like multitail but for Windows cmd.exe or powershell (not GUI)?
Sridhar Ratnakumar's user avatar
6 votes
4 answers
3k views

Is there anyway to `cat` two remote `tail -f` streams via SSH?

I wanted to combine two continuous text streams generated by tail -f into one and watch them in the same screen. Is it possible? Both text streams are line-oriented (e.g. logs), if that helps. ...
Riobard's user avatar
  • 474
6 votes
5 answers
26k views

tail -v a file while excluding a list of words

I'd like to tail a log file that's continuously being written to but would like to exclude various entries that are 'common' so I only see errors, etc. as they are thrown. I can pipe to grep -v "...
John's user avatar
  • 61
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

Tail -f on newly-created files with unknown names

I have a program that for each run generates a new log file. To watch what's going on, I'd like to tail -f the log - only problem is that I don't actually know the file name in advance. So, is there ...
Dave Vogt's user avatar
  • 1,738
6 votes
1 answer
4k views

tail a file without wrapping the lines on a mac

I want to tail -f a file that may contain very long lines. I would also like to see one line per screen line and scroll to the side if necessary, much like Vim's zL and zH, so no line wrapping, Is ...
mmlac's user avatar
  • 318
6 votes
1 answer
1k views

tail -f file stops tailing on rename

I want to tail -f file but going tailing it after a mv. The tail manpage tells me: -f means --follow=descriptor so a mv should not change the inode? Why does tail -f stop working after the rename?
Psi's user avatar
  • 163
6 votes
2 answers
3k views

Filter tail command through multiple grep commands to separate files

What I am trying to do is filter the output of one log file into separated log files based on a grep filter. tail -f test.log | tee >(grep "Error" > error.log) >(grep "Warning"" > warning.log) ...
Ryan's user avatar
  • 61
6 votes
1 answer
2k views

Monitoring log files over smb

I am monitoring a couple of windows 2k3 servers from a mac running Os x Lion. I use smb to connect to the server's file system, navigate to the folder where the log files are and open them with ...
gaudi_br's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
6k views

How can I have ls follow the content of a directory like tail -f does on a file

I want to basically continuously update the file list of a directory similar to how tail does with the -f flag on a file. is there any reasonable way to do this?
loosecannon's user avatar
5 votes
1 answer
6k views

How to easily break up a text file into pieces smaller than a threshold?

I have some text files that are 100 to 300 MB in length that I want to view in Emacs, but my Emacs gets into some performance issues opening and traversing such large files. Therefore, I'm looking ...
WilliamKF's user avatar
  • 7,908
5 votes
1 answer
2k views

How do I tail a block device in Linux?

I am trying to get just the last 1024 bytes of /dev/sda2. When I do sudo tail -c 1024 /dev/sda2 | hd, the prompt just hangs until I hit Ctrl-C. However, when I tail -c 1024 ddfilecopyofsda2 | hd, I ...
clearcom0's user avatar
5 votes
3 answers
3k views

Tail multiple files while piping one of the files through grep

I want to use tail follow two log files, but one of the log files has too much data, so I want it filtered with grep. tail -f file1 file2|grep mySearch The issue with this is that both files are run ...
Brian's user avatar
  • 389
5 votes
1 answer
3k views

Unix /Linux show the last part of a file with line numbers

Is there a way to make tail show a line number in front of the last lines it show so that it show the growth of the file when using it in a script. e.g: when using it in a script like this one: ...
Erwin's user avatar
  • 53
4 votes
3 answers
5k views

Coloured output when tailing php error log

I'm trying to find a way (through escape characters or software) to display coloured lines in my php error log. Right now I'm reading from them (live) with tail -n 50 -f /var/log/apache2/error.log ...
Jamie Taylor's user avatar
  • 1,451
4 votes
2 answers
3k views

tail stops working

I am tailing a file in unix. It stops working sometimes and I have to re-run the command. Anyone know why this happens?
user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
1k views

How can I tail a file and capture the output for one minute?

I am tailing a log file. How can I capture the output for one minute?
blackwing's user avatar
  • 611
4 votes
1 answer
23k views

Combining find grep and tail

I am trying to find all files that start with a certain name, then go through each file to find lines that contains a string, then only print out the last line of each file that contain the string. ...
Shep Bryan's user avatar
4 votes
5 answers
3k views

Linux application to tail multiple log files (like OS X Console.app)

I'm constantly tailing log files. At any given time I've got half a dozen terminal windows open that are simply running tail -f . In OS X, the Console app is brilliant. All the usual log files are ...
rcourtna's user avatar
  • 193
4 votes
1 answer
4k views

Other ways to increase max open files?

I have an application which keeps giving me the following error. tail: inotify cannot be used, reverting to polling: Too many open files I have already followed all the advice I've been able to find ...
sffc's user avatar
  • 417
3 votes
3 answers
2k views

How to grab a random section in the middle of a huge file?

I have a huge log file of around 3.5 GB and would like to sample random sections in the middle of say 10 MB for the purpose of debugging what my application is doing. I could use head or tail ...
WilliamKF's user avatar
  • 7,908
3 votes
1 answer
22k views

Extract the contents of ELF and write to binary file

I have been trying to extract the contents of a firmware and putting it to a binary file, but with no success. I see the right hex contents, but am not sure how to laid them in bits into a file. ...
Ursa Major's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
8k views

How to pipe output of tail -F on OS X?

I've recently moved from Ubuntu to OS X and I'm finding that the 'tail' command behaves differently. On Ubuntu I could run tail -f xyzzy.log | espeak (To have the computer read me what's happening ...
Nick Loewen's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
642 views

Why tail -f is not working for a proc file?

I have a proc file which is updated by a driver. In user space I am reading using tail. It is working fine, But when i give -f option for tail, It is not working. This means it is reading file ...
Chinna's user avatar
  • 2,289
3 votes
3 answers
1k views

tail from a specific starting word

I'm trying to get the last lines of a text file starting with the word 'cold'. I don't know which line the first occurrence of the word will be but I want it and every line after it to print. I've ...
user652437's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

quick tail on a huge file on linux

I need to get the last 10 million lines of a 100 million lines file. tail -n 10000000 $in_file>$out_file however the above command took more than 1 day and is still going. I guess I can use the nice ...
user15586's user avatar
  • 657
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

How to "tail" multiple pipe files or streams?

I need to monitor a lot of web servers for runtime errors and I have an idea of running a script like #!/bin/bash -e # Example set of hosts HOSTS=( host1 host2 ) for host in ${HOSTS[@]} do [...
Andrey Utkin's user avatar
3 votes
3 answers
99 views

Discard content of logfile, keeping tail

I'm looking for a way how to discard content of the logfile, leaving only defined tail. In two steps it's quite easy: tail -n1000 alert_migtst.log > alert_migtst.tail mv -f alert_migtst.tail ...
Ren's user avatar
  • 33
3 votes
1 answer
3k views

How to display/monitor the tail of a growing CSV file in tabular format?

I am looking for a way to display an open, "live" CSV file under Windows 7. For example, I have a proprietary program running that is generating log data in CSV format. I'd like to keep an eye on what ...
yosh m's user avatar
  • 2,266
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to monitor files matching a wildcard with multitail

I have a 'logs' directory full of log files whose names follow this format: XXX-YYYY-DATE-N.txt where N is a number that grows bigger as time goes on. So for example right now I have: xxx-yyy-...
Pete's user avatar
  • 63
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

Tailing multiple files with less

I want to have the best of both worlds with tail and less. Following multiple files, like tail can, but also having the scrollable buffer of less. So, I tried: tail -f mylog1 mylog2 | less +F But ...
user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
2k views

How do I tail Windows 10 Update Log

I have a following batch file that runs on startup wuauclt.exe /detectnow /updatenow start /min C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log But now in Windows 10 log file simply has the following Windows Update ...
SeanClt's user avatar
  • 2,227
3 votes
0 answers
383 views

Log tailing over SMB much slower under Samba 4 vs Samba 3

I just upgraded my internal development VM running Ubuntu 11.10 with Samba 3.6 to Ubuntu 15.04 with Samba 4.1 (fresh install, new VM). Everything is working great, with the exception that my log ...
jimp's user avatar
  • 445
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

GUI for tail for Linux

Could someone recommend a graphical tail kind of document viewer? So that I could open a document, scroll up and down, etc. and that the document would refresh itself automatically (without prompting, ...
Grzenio's user avatar
  • 2,967