Python's tail -f implementation for remote files

Dikkie Dik dikkie at nospam.org
Wed May 28 19:43:18 EDT 2008


asdf wrote:
> Basically what i want to do is to read a file
> that is being constantly appended to but which
> is located on a remote server.
> I found this for doing BASH's tail -f in python:
> 
> import os
> tailoutputfile = os.popen('tail -f syslog')
> while 1:
>     line = tailoutputfile.readline()
>     if len(line)==0:   # change the termination condition 
>         break
>     process_line(line)
> 
> and it works great. But not sure how to use this with
> ssh command to connect to remote machine.
> 
> Any tips?

ssh host_address 'tail -f file_name'

Should do it (from the command line). Off course, you can put this into 
popen as well. If you log in with a public key (see ssh-keygen), you do 
not have to supply a password using the console.

Best regards.



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