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Tail a log-file over the network

Terminal - Tail a log-file over the network
tail -f error_log | nc -l 1234
2010-05-07 18:14:04
User: zlemini
Functions: tail
3
Up
Down
Tail a log-file over the network

Netcat is used to serve a log-file over a network on port 1234.

Point a browser to the specified server/port combo to view log-file updates in real-time.

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 2 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
socat -u FILE:/var/log/syslog,ignoreeof TCP4-LISTEN:12345,fork,reuseaddr
2013-02-18 13:36:01
User: ichbins
Tags: socat
6
Up
Down
Tail a log-file over the network

it also works with the chrome browser. The alternative with tail and nc doesn't

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
(echo -e "HTTP/1.1 200 Ok\n\r"; tail -f /var/log/syslog) | nc -l 1234
2013-02-09 06:15:42
User: adimania
Functions: echo tail
Tags: tail log http nc tail -f
4
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Tail a log-file over the network

This one is tried and tested for Ubuntu 12.04. Works great for tailing any file over http.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

That doesn't seem to work with my Firefox.

How does netcat handle the http procol ?

Comment by dooblem 158 weeks and 6 days ago

Sorry i should have mentioned i tested this on MacOS.

Here is the Linux (Ubuntu) version:

( echo -e "HTTP/1.0 200 Ok\n\r"; tail -f error_log; ) | nc -lp 1234

Comment by zlemini 158 weeks and 6 days ago

I did as you posted in your comment, but my nc man pages says that l and p cannot be used together, nc won't start; I'm on Ubuntu 10.04, my nc version is: OpenBSD netcat (Debian patchlevel 1.89-3ubuntu2)

Comment by Montecristo 158 weeks and 2 days ago

I've taken the last version from sourceforge but it still doesn't work, when I point my browser to http://localhost:1234 it keeps loading...

Comment by Montecristo 158 weeks and 2 days ago

there are two versions of netcat. One should be started with -l -p and another one without -p. Yeah, welcome to the unix world. This command doesn't work well because browser buffers some amount of data and if nothing is written to the transferred file nothing is shown. Additionally this command doesn't work with chrome browser.

Comment by ichbins 13 weeks and 4 days ago

Your point of view

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