Take the 2-minute tour ×

I've got a log file that's managed to bloat upto 150MB. Is there a way to read only the last say 100 lines of the file instead of the whole thing? I don't want to have to download a 150 MB file with my current connection. I'd rather SSH in and read the relevant parts.

share|improve this question

2 Answers 2

up vote 4 down vote accepted

tail [filename]

share|improve this answer

To expand on Farseeker's answer: tail -n 100 [filename] to get the last 100 lines.

share|improve this answer
Or: tail -100 foo –  Xepoch May 20 '10 at 6:39
the -f option shows the last five, and then each new line as it comes in. You can also do things like -100f for the last 100 lines, then follow, and you can grep the output, just put "| grep ERROR" after any of these, and you will only see lines with ERROR in them –  Ronald Pottol May 20 '10 at 14:58

Your Answer


