Linux – Tail -f on newly-created files with unknown names

linuxshelltail

I have a program that for each run generates a new log file. To watch what's going on, I'd like to tail -f the log – only problem is that I don't actually know the file name in advance.

So, is there a way to follow all files that match a certain (shell glob) pattern? I guess I could easily script something like this, but I'm wondering if there's already a solution out there.

Best Answer

I don't think there's a direct way to do with with tail without knowing the name - if you knew that then tail --follow=name --retry would work and it would wait for the file to appear and then start following it.

I'd suggest writing a little shell script that uses inotifywait to watch for the file appearing and then starts tail -f to follow it.

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Tail -v a file while excluding a list of words

You can use grep -v "pattern" like you said. But instead of pattern use

`cat file_with_entires_to_skip`

Remember to include the backtics. So your command would look like:

tail -v FILE | grep -v "`cat FILE_WITH_ENTRIES_TO_SKIP`"

Linux – any way to run grep backwards, i.e. from the end of the file and up

I think the command that will best help you is tac: http://linux.die.net/man/1/tac

As it states:
tac - concatenate and print files in reverse

So you could pipe it to grep and match nnn number of lines before stopping, or something along those lines.

Best Answer

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Tail -v a file while excluding a list of words

Linux – any way to run grep backwards, i.e. from the end of the file and up

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