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 AT acm.org) and may be freely distributed under
       the terms of the X11/MIT License.  There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for this program.

SEE ALSO
       tail(1), less(1)



                                         13 February 2003                                TAILF(1)