A very useful tool for monitoring logfiles is Swatch (aka Simple WATCHer of Logfiles). This is a perl program that essentially watches a logfile. You can run as many instances of it as you want, but you can only watch one logfile per instance. Depending on the log file you want to watch, you may have to run swatch with some additional privilege. For instance, /var/log/messages is likely to be the primary target for anyone interested in using swatch. But this file should be readable