Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,

I want to check a log file that gets updated very frequently, almost every second. What I want to do from a script is to check this log file
1) for a particular string
2) for a specified time
while it is getting updated. And as soon as it finds that particular string the command should stop.
I got the information from this forum which will satisfy the need 1)
but now I am looking how can a specify time for which the log file should be checked.

Originally Posted by Annihilannic
Try:
Code:

Code:

tail -f $VAULogFile | awk '/Phase/;/Phase 2 ended/ { exit }'

No need for a kill, the tail should terminate automatically when the pipe is closed.

Above is the code I used to check the log file for a particular string and exit when it is found. But now I want to specify time for which the log file should be checked and if the string is not found in the specified time then tail stop. Is it possible?

Thanks.

Try:

Code:

tail -f $VAULogFile | awk '/Phase/;/Phase 2 ended/ { exit }' &
sleep time_in_secs
kill %1

If you're on Linux:

Code:

timeout 30 tail -f $VAULogFile | awk '/Phase/;/Phase 2 ended/ { exit }'

If not:

Code:

tail -f $VAULogFile | awk '/Phase/;/Phase 2 ended/ { exit }' &
PID=$!

DIEAT=`expr $SECONDS + 30`
while [ -d /proc/$PID ] && [ "$SECONDS" -lt "$DIEAT" ]
do
        sleep 1
done

[ -d /proc/$PID ] && kill "$PID"
wait

Thank you bartus11 and Corona688. It helped me. And sorry for responding so late....

Better late than never.