Follow the growth of a log file
tailf [option] file
tailf will print out the last 10 lines of the given file and then wait for this 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.
-n, --lines=number, -number
Output the last number lines, instead of the last 10.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
This program was originally written by Rik Faith ([email protected]) 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 ([email protected]).
The tailf command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.