Question

I would like to have a desktop shortcut open cygwin so that I can tail a log file.

Currently I perform the following steps manually:

1. Start cygwin
2. cd dev/server/logs
3. tail -f error.log

I would like to automate the three steps.

Answer 1

You could create a Windows shortcut to the following target…

C:\cygwin\bin\tail.exe -f "C:\Path\to\the\error.log"

…assuming that’s where your tail executable is. Doing which tail in a Cygwin shell should confirm that.

That should run the binary in a cmd window. Do Ctrl-C to stop it.

EDIT: Oh, one thing I forgot… This might require “C:\cygwin\bin” in your PATH env variable.