NAME

lnav - log file viewer for the terminal

SYNOPSIS

lnav [options] [logfile1 logfile2 ...]

The Logfile Navigator, lnav, is a log file viewer for the terminal. Given a set of files/directories, lnav will:

-h: Print help and exit
-H: Display the internal help text.
-I path: Add the given configuration directory to the search path.
-W: Print warnings related to lnav's configuration.
-u: Update formats installed from git repositories.
-d file: Write debug messages to the given file.
-V: Print version information.
-r: Recursively load files from the given directories.
-R: Load older rotated log files as well.
-c cmd: Execute a command after the files have been loaded.
-f path: Execute the commands in the given file.
-e cmd: Execute a shell command-line.
-t: Prepend timestamps to the lines of data being read in on the standard input.
-n: Run without the curses UI. (headless mode)
-N: Do not open the default syslog file if no files are given.
-q: Quiet mode. Do not print the log messages after executing all of the commands.

logfile1: The log files or directories to view. If a directory is given, all of the files in the directory will be loaded.

-i: Install the given format files in the $HOME/.lnav/formats/installed directory and exit.
-m: Switch to the management command-line mode. This mode is used to work with lnav's configuration.
-C: Check the configuration and exit. The log format files will be loaded and checked. Any files given on the command-line will be loaded checked to make sure they match a log format.

To load and follow the 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

This manual page was written by Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org> for the Debian system (but may be used by others).

April 2024