NAME

       inotail - A fast and lightweight version of tail using inotify

SYNOPSIS

       inotail [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION

       inotail  is  a  replacement  for  the  'tail'  program found in the base installation of every Linux/UNIX
       system. It makes use of the inotify infrastructure in recent versions of the Linux  kernel  to  speed  up
       tailing  files in the follow mode (the '-f' option). Standard tail polls the file every second by default
       while inotail listens to special events sent by the kernel through the inotify API to determine whether a
       file needs to be reread. Note: inotail will not work on systems running  a  kernel  without  inotify.  To
       enable inotify, please set CONFIG_INOTIFY=y in your Linux kernel configuration and recompile it.

       Currently inotail is not fully compatible to neither POSIX or GNU tail but might be in the future.

OPTIONS

       -c N, --bytes=N
              output  the  last  N  bytes.  If  the  first  character of N is a '+', begin printing with the Nth
              character from the start of each file.

       -f, --follow
              keep the file(s) open and print appended data as the file grows

       -n N, --lines=N
              output the last N lines (default: 10) If the first character of N is a '+',  begin  printing  with
              the Nth line from the start of each file.

       -v, --verbose
              print headers with file names

       -h, --help
              show help and exit

       -V, --version
              show inotail version and exit

AUTHOR

       Written by Tobias Klauser <tklauser@distanz.ch>

SEE ALSO

       tail(1), inotify(7)

                                                   2006-08-13                                         INOTAIL(1)