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tailf − follow the growth of a log file |
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tailf [OPTION] file |
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tailf will print out the last 10 lines of a file and then wait for the file to grow. It is similar to tail -f but does not access the file when it is not growing. This has the side effect of not updating the access time for the file, so a filesystem flush does not occur periodically when no log activity is happening. tailf is extremely useful for monitoring log files on a laptop when logging is infrequent and the user desires that the hard disk spin down to conserve battery life. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. |
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−n, −−lines N, −N |
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output the last N lines, instead of the last 10. |
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This program was originally written by Rik Faith (faith@acm.org) and may be freely distributed under the terms of the X11/MIT License. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for this program. The latest inotify based implementation was written by Karel Zak (kzak@redhat.com). |
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tail(1), less(1) |
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The tailf command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/. |