MultiTail
MultiTail is a program for monitoring multiple log files,[1] in the fashion of the original tail program. The original tail presents the last few lines of a single log file, optionally providing a real-time display of the growing file.
MultiTail started as an attempt to provide a program which would display two log files in a split screen. Originally it was a copy of wtail.[2] The difference was that wtail started reading at the start of the file by itself while MultiTail invoked one or more tail processes which only display the last few lines.
MultiTail splits the terminal window or the console of a Unix system into two or more subwindows into which it can merge log files and command outputs. It can also display (like the original tail) in a single window.
Capabilities include:
- Monitoring of wildcards: if another file matching the wildcard has a more recent modification date, it will automatically switch to that file. This allows monitoring a complete directory of files
- Merging of two or more input sources
- Use of colors when displaying the log files (through regular expressions), to distinguish important information.
- Filtering of lines (through regular expressions)
- Interactive menus for editing regular expressions and for deleting and adding windows.
- Use the output of shell scripts and other software.
- Mimicking the functionality of tools such as watch when viewing the output of external software.
Platforms:
- Multitail runs on all major Unix platforms (AIX, *BSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Mac OS X, SCO OpenServer, Solaris, Tru64) and also on Cygwin 1.5.19-4; Cygwin allows running Unix programs on Microsoft Windows.