Reading Logs (Linux)

[jcontonio]

I remember I used to be able to type cat -e 20 file or something to that effect to display the last 20 lines of a textfile in real time. I want to be able to have my messages log scroll in my terminal at work so I know nothing is going wrong at home...Can someone tell me how to do this?

Which logs are the ones that are important to watch? I am guessing messages, syslog, and maybe security?

 

[n0cmonkey]

tail will solve your problems. tail -20 will show the last 20 lines. tail -f will show you the last $DEFAULT number of lines (man for default) and keep reading the file as new data appears.

No clue what to look for in Linux though. I would keep an eye on messages and my firewall logs on my system though.

 

[TonyRic]

tail -20 should work just dandy in Linux... man tail will give you your cli options for other purposes... 🙂

messages, auth.log, syslog, user.log and /var/log/httpd/access_log are all the ones I watch...

 

[jcontonio]

That's right, tail! Thank you so much.

Now I just need to find out why ssh, ftp are working fine, but I can't get apache to work outside. I can hit it locally when I am home by typing my hostname in the address bar of a browser, but it won't connect from anywhere else.

 

[jcontonio]

i am having troubles keeping tail open though...it reads the last 20 lines then quits...It won't do it real time. I can't find any arguments to pass it in the man pages either to keep it open?

 

[Nothinman]

Like n0c said in his first post tail -f is what you want.

 

[jcontonio]

I am dumb =)



<< Like n0c said in his first post tail -f is what you want. >>

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< I am dumb =)



<< Like n0c said in his first post tail -f is what you want. >>

>>



Just type faster than you read.