Super helpful timestamp clock while tailing error logs.
At work I have to watch my server’s error log. Good old tail -F /path/to/log runs over SSH all day, every day. Each entry is timestamped. Sometimes those timestamps give me trouble. The age of a timestamp is found by subtracting it from the current time. If I need to know whether the last error occurred 1 minute ago or 61 minutes ago I have to contend with:
- timestamps in UTC vs. local clock in CST
- timestamps in 24h vs. local clock in 12h
- terminal window on second screen vs. clock on main screen
- daylight savings vs. non-crazy time
- being at home vs. traveling in other time zones
Finding the age of a timestamp should be simpler than that! So I put a real-time UTC clock in the most convenient place I could find: on the blank line where the next log entry will be written. It refreshes itself every…
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