tail -f, but with line numbers

tail -f | nl

works for me and is the first what I thought of - that is if you really want the lines numbered from 1 and not with the real line number from the file watched. Optionally add grep if needed to the appropriate place (either before or after nl). However, remember that buffering may occur. In my particular case, grep has the --line-buffered option, but nl buffers it's output and doesn't have an option to switch that off. Hence the tail | nl | grep combo doesn't really flow nicely.

That said,

tail -f | grep -n pattern

works for me as well. Numbering starts again from the beginning of the "tailing" rather than beginning of the whole log file.

I think this is better..

less -N +F <filepath>

You can also pipe the output to less, it has a line number feature, -N which would allow you to scroll back and forth through the log.

$ tail -f /var/log/foo.log | less -N

Example

  1 Jan 17 22:11:58 greeneggs fprintd[4323]: ** Message: entering main loop
  2 Jan 17 22:12:01 greeneggs su: (to root) saml on pts/5
  3 Jan 17 22:12:28 greeneggs fprintd[4323]: ** Message: No devices in use, exit
  4 Jan 17 22:12:56 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:12:56 | Git | personal_repo | Checking for remote changes...
  5 Jan 17 22:12:56 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:12:56 | Cmd | personal_repo | git rev-parse HEAD
  6 Jan 17 22:12:56 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:12:56 | Cmd | personal_repo | git ls-remote --heads --exit-code "ssh://[email protected]      
  6 8us.org/home/sam/SparkleShare/personal_repo.git" master
  7 Jan 17 22:12:58 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: X11 forwarding request failed on channel 1
  8 Jan 17 22:12:58 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:12:58 | Git | personal_repo | No remote changes, local+remote: 532213be48cce3b93cb177d409faa      
  8 03b71d0cfa5
  9 Jan 17 22:13:35 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:13:35 | ListenerTcp | Pinging tcp://notifications.sparkleshare.org:443/
 10 Jan 17 22:13:35 greeneggs gnome-session[1876]: 22:13:35 | ListenerTcp | Received pong from tcp://notifications.sparkleshare.org:443/

NOTE: Take notice of the output. You may or may not like this feature, but it will take long lines and chop them so that they continue on the next line, but still maintain the same corresponding line number. I find this feature invaluable when parsing log files that are wide! You can see the effect of this feature on lines 6 & 8.