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Aditya M P
Asked: 2014-02-05 05:55:13 +0800 CST

Is there a way to clear the terminal screen during a running process?

  • 772

For example, I'm running tail -f someLogFile. My screen has gotten full to the point that only the last line is changing. I now want to clear the screen; but the usual Ctrl+L doesn't work, just shows me the output ^L.

command-line

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Using Ctrl + L Won't work as input from keyboard is not accepted, but You can do this:

    Toolbar options of Terminal -> Terminal -> Reset and clear

    This will do the trick!

    hope this helps!

    • 17

  2. For Ubuntu (16.04) :

    Go to Terminal > Preferences > Shortcuts (tab) > Under "Terminal Section" > set Shortcut key for "Reset" and "Reset and Clear" , It is disabled by default.

    Hope this helps!

    • 8

  3. ctrl+l unfortunately doesn't work during tail.

    There are a few things you could do. If you are using the default unity terminal, you can go to Terminal > Reset and clear.

    If you are not using a graphic terminal or you're using a different terminal The best thing you could do is run the log into a text file using

    tail -f /foo/bar > ~/output.txt

    then you can view it using a text editor. That would let you scroll the file manually.

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