Conky - Command Output Display Limited to 256 Bytes 'tail -n20 logfile.txt'

Question

I am trying to display the contents of a large log file on the desktop using conky. I would like the 'window' to occupy the upper half of the desktop, and show the 20 most recent lines.

I use the line ${execi 3 tail -n20 ~/myfile.txt} in my conky script file but the results get truncated when conky displays them on the desktop. I have measured this to exactly 256 bytes (including spaces).

So I get 2 or 3 lines worth of contents only instead of 20. How do I get conky to display the full results of a command that comes out nicely in a terminal, such as a call to tail?

I would also like to grep the results, and keep grep highlighting colors on the desktop display if possible.

Anyone can help? Many thanks!

Answer 1

Fix it with text_buffer_size 2048

text_buffer_size bytes

Size of the standard text buffer (default is 256 bytes). This buffer is used for intermediary text, such as individual lines, output from $exec vars, and various other variables. Increasing the size of this buffer can drastically reduce Conky's performance, but will allow for more text display per variable. The size of this buffer cannot be smaller than the default value of 256 bytes.