Comments on: Learning Linux: Log Files

By: Goddard

Goddard — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:31:35 +0000

Nothing personal to the author because I did get benefit, but it doesn’t really cover log files extensively enough. I would like to know what the messages mean in greater detail. I run Ubuntu and on Ubuntu there is a program to view all these files so viewing them isn’t a problem. Cracking the log file code is another problem.

Thanks for the article please elaborate on this subject.

By: dreur

dreur — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:29:15 +0000

@Eric D
less +F logfile.log

By: What is Linux?

What is Linux? — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:14:32 +0000

Thanks, Jack. The log files is one aspect of the computer that I always knew that I need to understand better, but just never got around to it. You have once again proven that you know what we really need, and write great articles about them instead of simply rehashing what is being blogged about everywhere else. Thanks!

By: Eric D

Eric D — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:12:29 +0000

Don’t use “tail -f”, use “less” and then type “F”.
- If you see that there were 150 lines of errors at the end of your log, you need to stop, open with less… If you’re in less already, just hit ctrl-c and go up.
- You open a console to check a log file, realise it’s showing large lines, extend the window size. With tail, the already printed logs will remain cut, only the new lines will print to the new full width. With less, it redisplays your screen accordingly
- With less, you can pause your “tail” to look at a specific line and resume later.

The only drawback with this method is that you need to type “F” inside less, AFAIK there is no command-line flag like “less -f blah.log”.

By: The Mighty Buzzard

The Mighty Buzzard — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:15:09 +0000

It goes without saying that the emdashes in the above comment are supposed to be double dashes. I have no idea why someone would feel the need to write code that tells me what I meant to type.

By: The Mighty Buzzard

The Mighty Buzzard — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:07:18 +0000

This might work a bit better for those with long uptimes where logfile rotation is an issue.

tail –follow=name –retry –max-unchanged-stats=5 /var/log/foo