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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 periodi- cally 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 (<a href="mailto:faith@acm.org">faith@acm.org</a>) and may be freely distributed under the terms of the X11/MIT License. There is ABSO- LUTELY NO WARRANTY for this program. SEE ALSO tail(1), less(1) AVAILABILITY The tailf command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from <a href="ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/" title="ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/">ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/</a>. 13 February 2003 TAILF(1)