TAILF(1)            Linux Programmer's Manual            TAILF(1)

NAME
       tailf - follow the growth of a log file

SYNOPSIS
       tailf 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.

BUGS
       An option could be provided to print out the last n  lines
       instead of the last 10.

AUTHOR
       This  program  was written by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
       and may be freely distributed under the terms of  the  GNU
       General  Public  License.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
       for this program.  The current maintainer  is  Avery  Pen-
       narun (apenwarr@worldvisions.ca).

SEE ALSO
       syslogd(8), apmd(8)

                           11 Jan 1996                          1