In many situations, especially when testing, I like to see the log file content (or other system output) on one of my open command line windows.
Most of the time
tail -f <log-file-name>
is just fine. However, sometimes I like to have more control of what displayed. In these cases, I use less (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_(Unix)):
less -F <log-file-name>
is more convenient (and powerful): I can navigate the whole file, search for specific content.
Note, that while tail uses a lower-case ‘f’ to follow the file as it’s being written to, less uses an uppercase ‘F’.
