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linuxbashtail

Is there a way to perform a "tail -f" from an url?

I currently use tail -f to monitor a log file: this way I get an autorefreshing console monitoring a web server.

Now, said webserver was moved to another host and I have no shell privileges for that. Nevertheless I have a .txt network path, which in the end is a log file which is constantly updated.

So, I'd like to do something like tail -f, but on that url. Would it be possible?In the end "in linux everything is a file" so..

Solution

  • You can do auto-refresh with help of watch combined with wget. It won't show history, like tail -f, rather update screen like top. Example of command, that shows content on file.txt on the screen, and update output every five seconds:

    watch -n 5 wget -qO-  http://fake.link/file.txt

    Also, you can output n last lines, instead of the whole file:

    watch -n 5 "wget -qO-  http://fake.link/file.txt | tail"

    In case if you still need behaviour like "tail -f" (with keeping history), I think you need to write a script that will download log file each time period, compare it to previous downloaded version, and then print new lines. Should be quite easy.