Keeps the last five hundred error lines in one file you can attach to a case, instead of describing the error out loud to somebody on a telephone.

logtail --follow --errors --keep 500 --out ./diag.txt

Note from the shelf row: Attach the file; do not paste the last line.

Before you install

• Runs on: Windows, Linux, macOS. the application must be 4.0.7 to 4.1.6.
• Space: about 58 KB for the download, plus [WORKING SPACE] while it runs. Half a megabyte of log at most.
• Rights: an ordinary user account; no elevation and no sudo for the tool itself
• Know first: [PREREQUISITE] — whoever writes this page up properly should say here what has to be true before the tool will run at all.

Download and verify

Take the build for your platform from the [SHARE] and check it against the digest on the shelf row before you unpack anything. The digest is also printed below.

certutil -hashfile logtail-1.2-win64.zip MD5
md5sum logtail-1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz
md5 logtail-1.2-macos.tar.gz

Expected: d51cc7b0e294. The shelf row carries the same digest.

Install

Copy it into place and put it on the path. Nothing here installs a service or a scheduled task, so there is no installer to run and nothing to reboot.

Windows

Unpack the zip, then:

xcopy logtail-1.2-win64 C:\Tools\logtail /E /I
setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\Tools\logtail"
logtail --version

Linux

Unpack it and link it onto the path:

# unpack into place
sudo tar -xzf logtail-1.2-linux-x64.tar.gz -C /opt
sudo ln -sf /opt/logtail/logtail /usr/local/bin/logtail
logtail --version

macOS

Unpack it and link it onto the path:

# unpack into place
sudo tar -xzf logtail-1.2-macos.tar.gz -C /opt
sudo ln -sf /opt/logtail/logtail /usr/local/bin/logtail
logtail --version

Check it worked

Check the version first, then run the one command the tool exists for. If the output matches, it is working:

logtail --version
logtail --follow --errors --keep 500 --out ./diag.txt

Expected output is the line shown in the block above; anything else means [TO DO: write the failure list].

Removing it

Delete the folder and drop the path entry. The tool keeps no state of its own, so there is nothing to unregister.

rmdir /s /q C:\Tools\logtail
sudo rm -rf /opt/logtail /usr/local/bin/logtail
sudo rm -rf /opt/logtail /usr/local/bin/logtail

If it goes wrong

• [KNOWN FAILURE 1] — the usual fixes for this tool have not been written down yet. Add them the second time somebody hits one.
• Wrong error number or a fault you cannot name: run the tool's own diagnostic first (shelf row), then the removal steps.
• Before any repair that writes to a store, take the export — backoff is the tool for it.
• If a tool on this shelf is being asked to fix something it was never written for, stop and ask the desk rather than reaching for a force flag.