Command Line Interface

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.

-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.

-t

Prepend timestamps to the lines of data being read in on the standard input.

-w <path>

Write the contents of the standard input to this file.

-V

Print the version of lnav.

-q

Do not print the log messages after executing all of the commands.

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.

TZ

The timezone setting is used in some log formats to convert UTC timestamps 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 with timestamps prepended:

make 2>&1 | lnav -t