Cat tails and logs. They go together like fine wines awk fed to input manglers producing honest to God, real, comma separated and sanitized penguified angels. That fly. The below is meant for Unix/Linux intermediate level system administrators and similar who want to understand why they’re not yet experts at the Unix/Linux game…
cat /var/log/mail.log
- whitehouse.gov:~#: cat /var/log/mail.log
- <600,000 lines of Hillary’s top secret mail server logs>
- whitehouse.gov:~#: ^cat^tail -f
- tail -f /var/log/mail.log # this was never typed.it’s the output of previous command
- # which itself is a command
- <running mail log; every time something hit’s the mail log it hits your screen too in real time>
Command/s:
- cat /var/log/mail.log # Dump contents of mail.log to standard output
- ^cat^tail -f <enter> # ^ transforms previous cat command into the ^tail -f command
- tail -f /var/log/mail.log # Isn’t Unix/Linux substitution great? (not typed; output after ^cat^tail -f’)
tail -f /var/log/mail.log # ^<cmd>^<cmd> Produces instant substitution of previous command
This is an extremely terse article very few people will understand, or even care/need to. But I’m well aware everyone has their own secret language which would be exercised on me should I ever get out of line. 😉 The picture above which accompanies this short, boring, mostly unneeded and unwanted “article” is the heaven in the glorious place Unix and Linux commands live.
I leave it to the intermediate level Unix/Linux system administrator slash engineer slash enthusiast to determine the true worth of today’s lesson, and what’s more impactful; your life, or this newly expanded free lease on life which will finally have the stars coming to you. No, not Tom Cruise, think more shall we say, celestial.
This has not been a public service announcement, another “thing” without a “place”.
