tailf - follow the growth of a log file
tailf [option]
file
tailf is deprecated. It may have unfixed bugs and will be removed from
util-linux in March 2017. Nowadays it's safe to use
tail -f (from
coreutils), in contrast to what the original documentation below says.
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 wishes the hard disk to 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]).
less(1),
tail(1)
The tailf command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.