Monitoring Logfiles with tail -f

The UNIX command tail is indispensible for monitoring logfiles in realtime. tail on its own prints the last 20 lines of a text file. Combined with the -f ``follow'' option, it will print each new line from the logfile as it is written. For example, to monitor the system status logfile:

$ tail -f /var/log/rotse.log

...

Jan 14 15:43:24 rotsei rotsed: Beginning ROTSE shutdown at Mon Jan 14 15:43:24 2002