The "tail" command doesn't work anymore in conky-1.3.5. It produces just a blank line. To reproduce, create a conkyrc file as following (make sure you have the permision to read /var/log/messages): TEXT foo ${tail /var/log/messages 10} bar Then, run the command: $ conky -c /path/to/the/conkyrc -o You'll see the conky window showing only "foo" and "bar" with a blank line in them. However, there should be the last 10 lines read from /var/log/messages, like conky-1.3.4-r2 does. I haven't seen anything saying the syntax of the tail command had changed in the /usr/share/doc/conky-1.3.5/ChangeLog.gz. So I think it's a bug of conky-1.3.5.
Oops, forgot to paste my `emerge --info`. Portage 2.0.53 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.14-suspend2-r7 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.14-suspend2-r7 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.73GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 ccache version 2.3 [enabled] dev-lang/python: 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -fforce-addr -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -fomit-frame-pointer -ftracer -pipe -ffast-math" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -fforce-addr -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -fomit-frame-pointer -ftracer -pipe -ffast-math -fvisibility-inlines-hidden" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distlocks sandbox sfperms strict userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.gentoo.or.kr/ ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/Gentoo ftp://gg3.net/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://gentoo.gg3.net/ ftp://gentoo.netnitco.net/pub/mirrors/gentoo/source/" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--enable-new-dtags -Wl,--sort-common -s" LINGUAS="en" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.asia.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X aac acpi alsa apache2 audiofile authdaemond avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdb cdr cjk crypt cups curl dbus directfb divx4linux emboss encode exif expat fam fbcon firefox fontconfig foomaticdb gd gif glut gpm gtk gtk2 gtkhtml hal i8x0 imlib immqt-bc irda jikes jpeg lcms libg++ libsamplerate libwww logrotate mad matroska mikmod mmx mmx2 mmxext mng mozsvg mp3 mpeg ncurses nls nptl nsplugin ntl offensive ogg oggvorbis openal opengl pam pcre pdflib png quicktime readline real sdl sms spell sqlite sse sse2 ssl subversion svg tcpd tetex threads truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode usb vhosts vorbis win32codecs wxwindows xml xosd xv xvid xvmc zlib linguas_en userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL
This is a known bug which has been resolved in cvs for some time. Please downgrade, use ${exec tail foo} instead, or wait for the next release.
Thanks Brenden