How to monitor a windows log file in real time?

Question

On windows how can I easily monitor a log file and see updates to the file in real time?

Basically, same functionality like tail -f log_file on Unix systems

Platform: Windows XP/2003/2008 server

[Update] this is quite handy for a quick monitoring(thanks to Ckarras's answer)
Quick screen shot of PowerShell type -wait (type is an alias for get-content)

Solution 1

I've been using BareTailPro for awhile, and have been very pleased. It hasn't been updated in awhile, but it still meets my needs. There's also a free version.

Here's some of the features:

• View files of any size (> 2GB)
• Configurable highlighting
• Monitor multiple files simultaneously
• High-performance search algorithm
• Regular expression text search
• Filter tail mode (include or exclude lines)

Solution 2

There's also an equivalent to "tail -f" under Windows, if you have PowerShell installed:

type -wait

Solution 3

I use Notepad++ as my default text editor on all my systems, and it has the nice bonus of having this built-in - just go Plugins -> Document Monitor -> Start to monitor. You can also use File -> Reload from disk to manually reload it.

Solution 4

You don't mention which platform you're using, but on Unix-like systems the tail command does this:

tail -f /var/log/messages

In fact there are implementations of tail for Windows also (eg. unxutils).

Solution 5

Actually, Log-Expert does what you want, plus a lot of nice feature

View more solutions

Comments

[chickeninabiscuit]

Which IDE are you using?

[Pacerier]

@Sung, Do you need readonly or editable?

[MikeSchinkel]

Why was this question marked off-topic?!?

[dance2die]

@MikeSchinkel Folks who closed marked it as "they tend to become obsolete quickly." It's a very old question so probably so.

[MikeSchinkel]

@dance2die — It is very frustrating to search for answers to real tech questions that I have only to find the question that could have possibly answered my question was closed by the pendants on the site for some arcane reason. It has me leaving the site with a negative feeling about the sites. And I say this as a former moderator on one of StackExchange sites. #justsaying

[dance2die]

@MikeSchinkel This question does have potential should I had kept it up to date. Hopefully folks w/ enough reps can reopen and reply with latest ways

[Rory]

How is this question even remotely off-topic?! Monitoring windows log files, sounds a lot like the first two bullet points of "on-topic" items listed here serverfault.com/help/on-topic

[Michael Haren]

The advanced features feel a little buggy but for simply tailing the file, it's perfect.

[dance2die]

But doesn't this mean I have to be running the command constantly?

[user122302]

No, the tail command will wait after printing the last line, and when the file is updated/appended it will print the new line(s) and wait again. Instead of plain tail you might try vanheusden.com/multitail.

[dance2die]

Because of "tail" stuff people were mentioning, I found something called "BareTail" - baremetalsoft.com/baretail So far it seems to be doing what I wanted. But I am open for more suggestions.

[Jorge Alves]

That one looks nice to know about too.

[dance2die]

+1 Wow, I have been using Notepad++ for awhile but didn't know about this functionality. thanks.

[Chris Canal]

He also said for the Windows OS.

[Chris Canal]

He edited his post to say it's for Windows OS only.

[EricMinick]

There are plenty of versions of tail for Windows, including in cygwin.

[Sophie Alpert]

Not when I answered, he hadn't.

[dance2die]

Would you post link to Kiwi Log Viewer? I am not sure if this one I found is the one you are referring to: kiwisyslog.com/kiwi-log-viewer-overview

[dance2die]

Great! I didn't get to run into this one.

[dance2die]

It looks like TextPad has a the same capability as NotePad++'s Document Monitor plugin

[dance2die]

Hmm. Cygwin. I haven't played around with that for years...

[DougN]

Yeah, that's the one -- kiwisyslog.com

[dance2die]

This is what (BareTail Free version) I settled with for now. Thanks Rob

[dance2die]

Wow. this is quite awesome. I had no idea about that "-wait" option for "Get-Content". Thanks ckarras. I have also updated question with the screenshot.

[Jacko]

yeah, this solution rocks. Better than notepad++, which only updates every 3 seconds, and is a bit flaky.

[Lior Alon]

@Scott can be downloaded as a plugin sourceforge.net/projects/npp-plugins/files/DocMonitor

[Lior Alon]

+1 from me too. I love Notepad++ but didn't even think of looking for a plugin. Bye bye BareTail.

[Ryan Ries]

Have an upvote for giving an answer that shows you can do this right out of the box if you know how to use OS and that you don't need to install 3rd party tools.

[Sameer Alibhai]

Plus its free :)

[Pacerier]

@VonC, Any disclaimers?

[VonC]

@Pacerier none that I can think of. But that was 6 years ago.

[user]

This is much slow for big files with long lines and the last update is from 2006 (12 years ago). The best program is pointed on this other answer Log viewer on Windows. The program glogg despite being simpler than this, handles big files with much better performance, was updated just last year, is open source (github.com/nickbnf/glogg) and has support to Windows, Linux and Max OSX.

[Stevoisiak]

For those of us unfamiliar with tail -f, what does type -wait do?

[ckarras]

It continuously watches the file for appended data and writes the new content to the console

[montonero]

+1 to this answer. LogExpert is by far the best free log monitoring tool. Much better than Baretail (which doesn't even have search in free version).

[kapitan]

wow, i didnt knew this exists. ive been kicking my ass on the tail -f command [+1]

[Jovylle Bermudez]

wait what is the sample use