Track activities and events > Set up tail as a Windows option

Set up tail as a Windows option

Use this procedure to set up the tail.exe utility in a way that lets you view real-time logging activity in Windows when you right-click a log file name and select a tail option.

  1. Create a directory on your local drive. For example, c:\tailoption. It is preferred to create a separate directory rather than a subdirectory in Activator root directory.
  2. Copy tail.exe from <install directory>\bin to the directory you created in the previous step.
  3. In Windows Explore, select Tools > Folder Options.
  4. Click the File Types tab.
  5. Scroll down to the LOG extension in the list of file types. Select it and click Advanced.
  6. Click New.
  7. In the Action field, type something descriptive like Tail.
  8. In the Application used to perform action field, type the path of the tail.exe file you copied in step 2. For example, c:\tailoption\tail.exe.
  9. Click OK.
  10. In the Actions area, select Tail or whatever you typed in step 7 and click Edit.
  11. In the Application used to perform action field, type -f between tail.exe and "%1" as follows:
  12. Before: C:\tailoption\tail.exe "%1"
  13. After: C:\tailoption\tail.exe -f "%1"
  14. Click OK.
  15. Optionally, click Set Default to make Tail or whatever you typed in step 7 the default action for log files.
  16. Click OK.
  17. Click Close.
  18. When the application server is running, navigate to <install directory>\common\logs, right-click a log file, select Tail or whatever you typed in step 7, and then view the log file as it is being written.

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