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)