Watching Log Files… A More Flexible Option

So everyone who knows about log files is familiar with tail -f, the wonderful -f option to tail that updates your screen as the log file grows. But did you know about using less and shift+f? The less command is nice because it allows you to scroll up and down, and search for things in a file using standard vi commands. If the file you are “lessing” happens to be a log file that is being updated shift+f comes in pretty handy. All you have to do is open the file with less and then type shift+f and less will start to behave very much like tail -f. To turn of following updates simply type ctrl+c.