How to View Live Tomcat Logs/Output On Linux?

When you run tomcat on linux with startup.sh shell script, unlike windows console, you won’t see complete logs. You will only see this

But , almost every time, you will be required to see the logs. Tomcat saves its logs in a file “catalina.out” under tomcat_installation_dir/logs directory. There are two ways that you can view logs

1. Just got to your tomcat installation directory and then go into logs directory

• # cd /tomcat_installation_dir/logs

1. Then issue the following command to view the logs

• # vi catalina.out

1. You can view the logs now, but they are not live. If they are changed you have to get out of editor and open the logs again
2. Second way is more convenient and its live. Again make sur your are in the tomcat logs directory and issue the following command

• #tail -f catalina.out

1. Now see the tomcat runtime logs. Example