Monitor a Log File While It Is Being Written To Using The PowerShell Tail Parameter
Recently, I had a client with a process that was out of control. The logs kept getting too large, too quickly and I wasn’t able to read it with Notepad++. I know that there are many other large text file readers, but I wanted to be able to monitor log as it grew. I was on a Windows Server so this was a perfect opportunity to use the PowerShell Get-Content -Tail & -Wait parameters.
Get-Content .\example.log -Tail 5 –Wait
The -Tail 5 portion does exactly what it sounds like it does… grabs the last 5 lines of text.
The -Wait parameter displays the next lines as they are added to the file.
This came in really handy for me and I hope it does for you too.
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