Custom file monitoring
Command Line – tail
© Lead Image photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash
When it comes to file monitoring, tail's replacements, colortail and MultiTail, offer more sophisticated control over how your information is displayed.
Pagers are a basic necessity for administering a system. That necessity is especially strong in Linux, where configuration settings are stored in text files. The best-known pagers, of course, are cat, less, and more, all of which present the entire contents of a file. However, if you want to monitor a file over time, such as the logs in /var/log or /tmp, the required tool is one that displays the lines at the end of the file, where new information is appended. The original tool for this purpose is tail, but, these days, it is increasingly being replaced by colortail or MultiTail. All these commands share the same basic functionality, but the replacements offer more control over how information is displayed (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The tail family is especially useful for monitoring the system logs found in /var/log.
tail and colortail
The original command, of course, is tail [1] (not to be confused with Tails Linux, which is used for secure browsing). By default, tail displays the last 10 lines of a file that it is monitoring. However, you can use
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Cairo Dock 3.6 Now Available for More Compositors
If you're a fan of third-party desktop docks, then the latest release of Cairo Dock with Wayland support is for you.
-
System76 Unleashes Pop!_OS 24.04 Beta
System76's first beta of Pop!_OS 24.04 is an impressive feat.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.