xenial (1) tailf.1.gz

Provided by: util-linux_2.27.1-6ubuntu3.10_amd64 bug

NAME
       tailf - follow the growth of a log file


SYNOPSIS
       tailf [option] file


DESCRIPTION
       tailf  is  deprecated.  It may have unfixed bugs and will be removed in March 2017. Nowadays it's safe to
       use tail -f (coreutils) in contrast to the original documentation below.

       tailf will print out the last 10 lines of the given file and then wait for this  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.

       -n, --lines=number, -number
              Output the last number lines, instead of the last 10.

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

       -h, --help
              Display help text 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/.