tail
Shares rank 59 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
Standard Unix utility that shows the end of a file or stream, mainly used to follow logs as they grow and for quick ad-hoc checks.
Standard Unix utility that shows the end of a file or stream, mainly used to follow logs as they grow and for quick ad-hoc checks.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Follows logs as they grow
“I usually use tail when I need to do some ad-hoc log following.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Assorted Less(1) Tips” “I'd rather just use journal or tail -f.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Log File Viewer for the Terminal” Useful for troubleshooting running processes
“tail suites my needs in the rare cases something unexpected seems to be happening”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “How can I read the standard output of an already-running process?” “I actually used this the other day for a long running process on OpenBSD”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “How can I read the standard output of an already-running process?”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
7 of the 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Tail and Head are my favourites to avoid wasting tokens.”
“I'd rather just use journal or tail -f.”
“I usually use tail when I need to do some ad-hoc log following.”
“This is useful e.g. when you trigger a function multiple times and want to easily see line groups from each attempt.”
“tail suites my needs in the rare cases something unexpected seems to be happening”
“I actually used this the other day for a long running process on OpenBSD”
“I’ve learned this is not the case.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.