On: Multitail

Multitail allows for continuous tailing (tail -f) of multiple files within one terminal/SSH session. To multitail (…yup, it’s also a verb) output from a (log?)file continuously, you set up an infinite loop that echos some output into two text files (can be ping, tcpdump, echo $RANDOM):

$> while true; do echo $RANDOM >> 2.abc ; echo $RANDOM >> 1.abc ; sleep 1 ; done &
[1] 2807

Launch multitail utility for those files:

$> multitail *.abc

You should see a continuously updating splitscreen, like this:

… and then enter fg to make the background process a foreground process.