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'\" t
.\" ** The above line should force tbl to be a preprocessor **
.\" Man page for inotail
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2006 Tobias Klauser <tklauser@distanz.ch>
.\"
.\" You may distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public
.\" License as specified in the file COPYING that comes with
.\" inotail.

.pc
.TH INOTAIL 1 "2006-08-13" "" "Inotify enhanced tail"
.SH NAME
inotail \- A fast and lightweight version of tail using inotify
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B inotail
[OPTION]... [FILE]...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B inotail
is a replacement for the 'tail' program found in the base installation of every
Linux/UNIX system. It makes use of the inotify infrastructure in recent versions
of the Linux kernel to speed up tailing files in the follow mode (the '\-f'
option). Standard tail polls the file every second by default while inotail
listens to special events sent by the kernel through the inotify API to
determine whether a file needs to be reread. \fINote:\fR inotail will not work
on systems running a kernel without inotify. To enable inotify, please set
CONFIG_INOTIFY=y in your Linux kernel configuration and recompile it.
.PP
Currently inotail is not fully compatible to neither POSIX or GNU tail but might
be in the future.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-c \fIN\fR, \fB\-\-bytes\fR=\fIN\fR
output the last N bytes. If the first character of N is a '+', begin printing
with the Nth character from the start of each file.
.TP
.B \-f, \fB\-\-follow
keep the file(s) open and print appended data as the file grows
.TP
.B \-n \fIN\fR, \fB\-\-lines\fR=\fIN\fR
output the last N lines (default: 10) If the first character of N is a '+',
begin printing with the Nth line from the start of each file.
.TP
.B \-v, \fB\-\-verbose
print headers with file names
.TP
.B \-h, \fB\-\-help
show help and exit
.TP
.B \-V, \fB\-\-version
show inotail version and exit
.SH AUTHOR
.PP
Written by Tobias Klauser
<tklauser@distanz.ch>
.SH SEE ALSO
.PP
.BR tail(1),
.BR inotify(7)