trusty (1) tailf.1.gz

Provided by: util-linux_2.20.1-5.1ubuntu20.9_amd64 bug

NAME
       tailf - follow the growth of a log file


SYNOPSIS
       tailf [OPTION] file


DESCRIPTION
       tailf  will  print  out the last 10 lines of a file and then wait for the 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
       desires that the hard disk spin down to conserve battery life.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -n, --lines=N, -N
              output the last N lines, instead of the last 10.

       -V, --version
              Output version information and exit.

       -h, --help
              Display help and exit.


AUTHOR
       This  program was originally written by Rik Faith (faith@acm.org) 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 (kzak@redhat.com).


SEE ALSO
       tail(1), less(1)


AVAILABILITY
       The   tailf   command   is   part    of    the    util-linux    package    and    is    available    from
       ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.