Easily Monitorize Log Files

In Unix, you can open a terminal server and type tail -f filename to monitor a log file and see how it grows. However, this is no easy to do in Windows.

But wait!!! There is cygwin that comes with a tail command. Cygwin can be installed under “my documents” folder if the rights of your computer are limited.

And cygwin comes with a tail command.

But there is more. If you can put commands into your “c:\Documents and Settings\username\SendTo” folder, there is something fantastic you can do.

In this folder, create a text file called monitorize.bat with this content:

@echo off
 
start "Cmd" "%windir%\system32\cmd.exe" /k tail -f %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6

With this tool in quiver, when you see a file you want to keep an eye on it, you just have to right-click on it and select “Send to → monitorize”. A new command line window will be opened with a tail executed monitorizing this file.