Terminal Interface¶

While running one of the pilot binaries you can, at any time, hit the <Enter> key which interrupts the log output and gives you a terminal prompt. You can now execute one of several commands. Type it in and press <Enter> to execute.

Commands that have an output keep the log paused after execution, to give you time to look at it. The log continues when you press <Enter> again.

The following commands are currently available:

  • quit exits the application
  • debug [level] changes the level of the output. The bigger the number, the more log messages you get.
  • errors outputs the last error messages
  • topic [expr] searches all topic names for expr. If there is no exact match, all topics that expr is a prefix of are shown. If there are none, all matches are shown.
  • module [expr] lists all modules that expr matches on. If there is an exact match, it displays more detailed information for that module.
  • grep <expr> restricts terminal output to messages that contain expr.
  • journal [expr] does the same as grep but first shows all past log messages that contain expr.
  • spy [expr] does the same as dump but without the actual message content.
  • dump [expr] outputs the messages on all topics that match expr.
  • htop [field] shows the modules with the highest CPU load in a table that refreshes regularly. field can be avg to change the sorting.
  • exec <module>[.method [args...]] and call <module>[.method [args...]] invoke the given method of the given module with the given arguments. exec waits for the command to finish and displays the result while call performs an asynchronous call. If no method is given, a list of method signatures for the module is shown.

While typing, the terminal will provide you with suggestions for the command and possible arguments. Press the <Tab> key to complete, press it twice to get a list of suggestions. You can also use the up and down arrows the scroll through the history of past commands.