The “tail” command can be used to last part of a file. The simple use of this command is to display specified number of lines present at end of the file. However you can use “-f” option to continue monitor for any new data being written in live. i.e This is useful if you would like to see what Linux kernel prints or to monitor log messages in live.

The following command monitors kernel messages. You need to have super user (root) privileges to access /proc/kmsg file which is a PROC file system interface to Linux kernel messages.

[root@techpulp ~]# tail -f /proc/kmsg

Similarly the following example monitors for log mesage in live.

[root@techpulp ~]# tail -f /var/log/messages