Monitor Logs Files in Real-time

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By default the tail command displays the last n=10 lines of any file[1]. Hence, this can be used to monitor any log file (e.g, Apache, MySQL, error logs, etc). The FreeBSD Tail man page has the most robust explanation on usage. Here’s the basic format:

$ tail -f /path_to_log/file.log

Where:

-f tells the OS to keep the command “open” and output (stream) to the terminal any updates to the file[1]. Outputting to the terminal (screen) is known as displaying to the standard output.

More Examples with Linux tail

Display last 30 lines in file, while outputting updates to the terminal

:

$ tail -f -n 30 /path_to_log/file.log

Furthermore, tail -f may be filtered through grep if you’re interested in specific requests[2]:

$ tail -f /path_to_log/file.log | grep 192.168.0.1

Are updates streaming too fast? Use inline bash scripting to add a 3 second delay[3]:

$ tail -f /path_to_log/file.log | while read line; do echo $line; sleep 3; done

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