Is there a tail that works over network share?

Question

I need a tail utility that works under windows and can monitor file on a network share. The ones I tried worked fine locally but not over SMB.

Answer 1

GNU utilities for Win32 has a native tail.exe that I just tested using an SMB path:

tail -f \\server\path\to\file

It seemed to work fine. I updated file using Notepad and tail reported it in my cmd window.

Answer 2

Get-Content in Powershell can do the equivalent as well if you want to go that route. Example

Answer 3

Here's a utility I wrote to do just that:

It uses a FileSystemWatcher to look for changes in log files within local folders or network shares (don't have to be mounted, just provide the UNC path) and appends the new content to the console.

on github: https://github.com/danbyrne84/multitail

http://www.danielbyrne.net/projects/multitail

Hope this helps