Command Line Interface

There are two command-line interfaces provided by lnav, one for viewing files and one for managing lnav’s configuration. The file viewing mode is the default and is all that most people will need. The management mode can be useful for those that are developing log file formats and is activated by passing the -m option as the first argument.

File Viewing Mode

The following options can be used when starting lnav. There are not many flags because the majority of the functionality is accessed using the -c option to execute commands or SQL queries.

Options

-h

Print these command-line options and exit.

-H

Start lnav and switch to the help view.

-C

Check the given files against the configuration, report any errors, and exit. This option can be helpful for validating that a log format is well-formed.

-c <command>

Execute the given lnav command, SQL query, or lnav script. The argument must be prefixed with the character used to enter the prompt to distinguish between the different types (i.e. :, ;, |, /). This option can be given multiple times.

-f <path>

Execute the given command file. This option can be given multiple times.

-e <command-line>

Execute the given shell command-line and display its output. This is equivalent to executing the :sh command and passing the -N flag. This option can be given multiple times.

-I <path>

Add a configuration directory.

-i

Install the format files in the .lnav/formats/ directory. Individual files will be installed in the installed directory and git repositories will be cloned with a directory name based on their repository URI.

-u

Update formats installed from git repositories.

-d <path>

Write debug messages to the given file.

-n

Run without the curses UI (headless mode).

-N

Do not open the default syslog file if no files are given.

-r

Recursively load files from the given base directories.

-V

Print the version of lnav.

-v

Print extra information during operations.

-q

Do not print informational messages.

Management Mode (v0.11.0+)

The management CLI mode provides functionality for query lnav’s log format definitions.

Options

-m

Switch to management mode. This must be the first option passed on the command-line.

-I <path>

Add a configuration directory.

Subcommands

config get

Print out the current configuration as JSON on the standard output.

config blame

Print out the configuration options as JSON-Pointers and the file/line-number where the configuration is sourced from.

config file-options <path>

Print out the options that will be applied to the given file. The options are stored in the file-options.json file in the lnav configuration directory. The only option available at the moment is the timezone to be used for log message timestamps that do not include a zone. The timezone for a file can be set using the :set-file-timezone command and cleared with the :clear-file-timezone command.

format <format-name> get

Print information about the given log format.

format <format-name> source

Print the name of the first file that contained this log format definition.

format <format-name> regex <regex-name> push

Push a log format regular expression to regex101.com .

format <format-name> regex <regex-name> pull

Pull changes to a regex that was previously pushed to regex101.com .

piper clean

Remove all of the files that stored data that was piped into lnav.

piper list

List all of the data that was piped into lnav from oldest to newest. The listing will show the creation time, the URL you can use to reopen the data, and a description of the data. Passing the -v option will print out additional metadata that was captured, such as the current working directory of lnav and the environment variables.

regex101 import <regex101-url> <format-name> [<regex-name>]

Convert a regex101.com entry into a skeleton log format file.

Environment Variables

XDG_CONFIG_HOME

If this variable is set, lnav will use this directory to store its configuration in a sub-directory named lnav.

HOME

If XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, lnav will use this directory to store its configuration in a sub-directory named .lnav.

APPDATA

On Windows, lnav will use this directory instead of HOME to store its configuration in a sub-directory named .lnav.

TZ

The timezone setting is used in some log formats to convert timestamps with a timezone to the local timezone.

Examples

To load and follow the system syslog file:

lnav

To load all of the files in /var/log:

lnav /var/log

To watch the output of make:

lnav -e 'make -j4'