The best Tail GUI

Question

What is the one single best GUI program for tailing log files you've come across?

Answer 1

Tail4Win is good enough for me.

Answer 2

Emacs. I have a custom (simple) mode called `angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode'. It is a minor mode that tails a file and enables highlight-changes-mode, so that new changes that come into the file while tailing are highlighted, but gradually fade to the normal text color over time. (Both tailing a file and highlight-changes-mode are built-in to Emacs.)

(defvar angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode-map
  (make-sparse-keymap))

(define-minor-mode angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode
  "View logs with colors.

Angry colors."
  nil " AngryLog" nil

  (cond (angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode
         (auto-revert-tail-mode 1)
         (highlight-changes-mode 1)
         (define-key angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode-map
           (kbd "C-c C-r")
           'highlight-changes-rotate-faces)
         (if (current-local-map)
             (set-keymap-parent angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode-map
                                (current-local-map)))
         ;; set the keymap
         (use-local-map angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode-map))

        (t
         (auto-revert-tail-mode -1)
         (highlight-changes-mode -1)
         (use-local-map (keymap-parent angry-fruit-salad-log-view-mode-map)))))

Answer 3

Marc Lehmann's improved root-tail - http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/root-tail.html

It lets you tail multiple system log files, and other log files, on your root window, combine them, colour the text. It's simple, powerful and very useful. Runs on Linux, and probably runs on other Unix systems.

Answer 4

On Windows I really like BareTailPro.

Answer 5

The SMS Trace log viewer works as well.

Answer 6

Kiwi Enterprises' Kiwi Log Viewer is awesome! (no affiliation with them, just a happy customer)

Answer 7

What about free tail programs, which is the best?

Answer 8

On Windows, I like mTAIL

Answer 9

A great windows tool with tailing, highlighting, filtering, columnizing and a rudimentary Eclipse integration is Log Expert. Also has a SDK and is free for both non-commercial and commercial use.

Answer 10

TailMe is my favorite stand-alone Windows tail GUI.

When using Eclipse, I really like nTail.

Answer 11

$ less +F something.log

I know you said GUI, but less is my favourite tail. Passing +F on the command line, or pressing F when viewing a file, puts it into "follow" mode just like tail -f, but with much more flexibility.

Say you're watching the logs and you see an error scroll past and off the screen. Press Ctrl-C and you drop into normal less, where you can page up and down, regex search through the entire file (find that error you saw, and others like it), pipe bits of it through shell commands, etc. Once you're done inspecting the file just press F again and you're back in "follow" mode.

Answer 12

On Mac os X, Survlog

I should mention I work for grasscove and created this product :)