DebAWeek: xtail

If there’s a graphical equivalent to xtail I would be very interested in learning about it. If there isn’t I hope that somebody writes on. I find xtail to be so valuable that I consider it nearly indispensible to any system administrator. And that seems odd when what it does is so simple: it watches multiple files (presumably) logs and prints their changes. But as simple as it sounds its value as a diagnostic tool is significant.

The reason the program is so useful is that when tracking down a problem or trying to understand a system process it is not always clear where the relevant logging entries will occur. Particularly with the issue of problem solving when one does not precisely know the nature of the problem xtail really helps by relaying what is happening on the system. The most common xtail command I run is:

• xtail /var/log/syslog /var/log/*.log

Or sometimes for more information:

• xtail /var/log/syslog /var/log/.log /var/log//*.log

One thing that is odd about xtail is that Ctrl+C is the key command to display statistics about the currently running instance. To exit, the key command Ctrl+\ is used. Of course xtail is not only meant for system logs but also for logs created by user applications, or often both at the same time. It’s such a small program that I would highly recommend installing it and simply using it in place of tail -f. Over time it’s value will become clear.