Troubleshooting CentOS

Using diff

The diff command is not necessarily considered to be a tool that is associated with log files unless you are comparing backups for a specific purpose. However, the diff command is very useful when comparing changes across an application.

For example, diff will enable you to compare the differences between two Apache configuration files, but by using the -u option, you will be able to include additional information such as the time and date:

# diff -u /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.backup

Now, depending on the size of the files in question and the speed of your server, it may take a few seconds (or even minutes) to complete the task, and yes, I do realize we were digressing from the context of log files, but in ...