Multitail

MultiTail lets you view one or multiple files like the original tail program. The difference is that it creates multiple windows on your console (with ncurses). It can also monitor wildcards: if another file matching the wildcard has a more recent modification date, it will automatically switch to that file. That way you can, for example, monitor a complete directory of files. Merging of 2 or even more logfiles is possible. It can also use colors while displaying the logfiles (through regular expressions), for faster recognition of what is important and what not. Multitail can also filter lines (again with regular expressions) and has interactive menus for editing given regular expressions and deleting and adding windows. One can also have windows with the output of shell scripts and other software. When viewing the output of external software, MultiTail can mimic the functionality of tools like 'watch' and such. (from package description)

• Last tested on multitail 6.4.2-1.el7,RHEL 7.7 (2019-11-11)

Phrasebook

Viewing all logs in one file

$ multitail --mergeall *.log

Viewing all merged logs in different colors (except for api*.log) in one window

$ multitail --mergeall -c- -Iw 'api-*.log' 10 -C -Iw 'laravel-*.log' 10 -Iw '/var/log/nginx/*log' 1000 -Iw '/var/log/redis/*.log' 1000 -cs -Iw '/var/log/anaconda/syslog' 100

Keyboard shortcuts

/ - Search in all windows

Shift + / - Search and highlight in all windows

I - Toggle case sensitivity for searches

b - Scroll back

B - Scroll back in all windows merged into one window

a - add a new window or add another file/program to an existing window

d - Delete a window (or a file/program from a window)

s - Swap the location of 2 windows

e - Enter/edit regular expressions

f - Enter/edit in line filter regexps

c - Set/change colors

v - Toggle vertical split

0...9 - Set a mark in a window so that you can easily see what has changed since the last time you looked

R - Restart a window

Ctrl + v - Select conversion scheme(s)

Ctrl + t - toggle subwindow before lines

Y - Send a signal to a window (for commands)

y - Set linewrap

T - Truncate a logfile

g - Make screendump

r - Redraw screen

l - List keybindings

i - Info

t - Statistics

o - Wipe (clear) a window

O - Wipe all windows

j - Set window sizes

z - Hide/unhide a window

u - Hide all windows but the one selected

U - Unhide all windows

w - Write a script which starts multitail with the current settings (the files that are monitored, regular expressions, etc.)

n - Clear the buffer of a window

N - Clear all buffers of all windows

m - Set the size of a buffer

k - Enter a (limited) terminal-mode

p - Pause all windows

P - (un-)pause one window

q - Quit