Documentation for CLI follow, follow-only and follow-strict

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

I could not find any documentation for these 3 parameters which are available for most CLI print commands.

But I have the feeling, depending on the section where the print command is used, they act different every time.

I always thought “follow-only” may be something like “tail -f” on linux.
But this does not output anything besides these separator line and the hint “hit spacebar to add a separator”.

Same goes for the other arguments. I simply do not know what they should do, because for me they do something different I would expect.

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Command+Line+Interface

There is a description for many print arguments, but the ones for the follow* are just missing.

2

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Command+Line+Interface#CommandLineInterface-GeneralCommands

Neither follow nor follow-only nor follow-strict are described. I would like to know the conceptual differences so I can distinguish when one makes more sense.

3

Just by trying:

follow       -> tail -f
follow-only  -> tail --lines 0 -f
follow-strict -> tail
4 
follow-strict -> tail

Seems like. But if this is really the equivalent, then “follow-strict” is probably the most inappropriate name of all time. There is no follow. Nothing strict also.

5

Follow should be there to rever to the other two, and strict could be interpreted as fixed, not changing.

I can’t think of an other name that would be better in combination with follow.

follow-till-now follow-fixed follow-prev follow-past follow-…

6

If it really needs to start with “follow-”, then maybe “follow-once” would suit better.

And how is follow-strict different to print?

7

Indeed, follow-strict does not add any thing different than print already do. It might be interesting to replace it with a option to limited the number of lines shown, beginning from last.

follow-last=10 → shows the last ten lines (.id) from the otherwise printed text.

See here for an example for /log : http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/log-get-issue-bug/168947/1

edit: then time could be also a way to select for items that also store times

follow-last=10s → shows the last lines that where written in the last 10 seconds

When using the option interval you can monitor but you don’t can’t select how many. Time is possible if you set the refresh time. And then filter out lines already seen. Easier is then to use follow-only and loop that every n-time.

8

So, is it possible to get the last 10 lines of the log? I have not been able to do so so far.

the option “follow-last=10” doesn’t exist, I guess it was a joke.

9

You can kinda cheat by using another “memory store” for the log with only 10 lines. I do to keep a readable log longer term, but still show debug-ish things. Not quite what you’re looking for however — I’m not sure you can just print the last 10 lines, easily that is.

/system logging add action=short topics=!debug memory-lines=10
/log print where buffer=short