# Monitor a set of JSON files in Filebeat

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitor-a-set-of-json-files-in-filebeat/65198>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [November 7, 2016, 10:06am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitor-a-set-of-json-files-in-filebeat/65198 "2016-11-07T10:06:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![ruflin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ruflin/32/3116_2.png) [@ruflin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ruflin)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/monitor-a-set-of-json-files-in-filebeat/65198/2 "2016-11-07T16:53:20Z")

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I think you are looking for ignore\_older option which must be used in combination with `clean_inactive`. This obviously only works, if you really now the predefined period when files will be overwritten. `close_eof` could also be helpful in your case if the file is only written once.

The problem in the above case seems to be, that the new file is not necessarly smaller then the old file. Filebeat can detect truncated files to start reading from scratch, but as with log files assumed, new file is smaller then old file.

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