How to View Last Lines of a Big File in Linux

By | November 27, 2008

This post is dedicated to Linux newbies as those who use it for everyday needs should know about this command. If not… I think this will be useful for you in any way.

When you’re a system administrator, you should often deal with logs. On a Linux server logs are permanently updated, that’s why we need to see last written lines of such a file. If you open it useing cat or more, you won’t see how it changes. A simple command will help you to do this.

tail -f error_log

This will show you last lines of error_log file. For a complete list of options you’re welcome to go here: or just type man tail in your console.

Hope this command will help you to monitor your server and increase its uptime :)