Monitoring log files with tail

Here’s a useful command for monitoring a log file for changes.

tail -n 0 -f c:/log.txt

The -n flag allows you to specify how many lines you want to output.

The -f flag instructs tail to keep monitoring the files for updates.

Entering the above command into a bash shell will monitor the file c:/log.txt and print out new content to the terminal as the file is modified.

• Updated 17/03/2014: Corrected tail flag descriptions.