How to view multiple files in single terminal?
Sometimes I may need to access multiple log files for troubleshooting , but I don't want to open them in different terminals.
What I want is to open them in same terminal.
Is there any way I can view tail part of the multiple log files in a same terminal window ?
If you have for example /var/log/syslog
, /var/log/auth.log
log files, you can view them both in one terminal by executing tail -f
command .
Open terminal and add the following command:
tail -f /var/log/syslog /var/log/auth.log
The output:
==> /var/log/syslog <==
Mar 4 17:44:15 client AptDaemon: INFO: Quitting due to inactivity
Mar 4 17:44:15 client dbus[815]: [system] Activating service name='org.debian.apt' (using servicehelper)
==> /var/log/auth.log <==
Mar 4 16:17:01 client CRON[13628]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Mar 4 16:17:01 client CRON[13628]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
To view tail part of multiple files in the single terminal window you can install multitail :
sudo apt-get install multitail
Usage: multitail <filename1> <filename2>
.
So the output will be part of file1 and part of file2 in the same terminal.
hope that helps.
If you have to ssh
into a remote machine to watch the logs there, you can run tmux
(or screen
) there , and tail the logs in split windows. Works local as well.