Real-Time Commands

Commands for live monitoring and time-based comparison: tail, top, watch, and diff.

tail

Live tail logs from server via Server-Sent Events (SSE).

lynxdb tail [filter] [flags]

Alias: t

Flags

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--count	-n	100	Number of historical events to fetch before live streaming
--from		-1h	Historical lookback period

Examples

# Stream all events
lynxdb tail

# Stream errors only
lynxdb tail 'level=error'

# Stream 5xx from nginx
lynxdb tail 'source=nginx status>=500'

# Last 50 events + live
lynxdb tail --count 50 --from -1h

Console Output

Events are colorized by level with timestamp, source, and message:

2026-01-15T14:23:01Z [ERROR] nginx: connection refused to upstream
2026-01-15T14:23:02Z [INFO] api-gateway: request handled in 45ms
--- historical catchup complete (47 events, 312ms) — streaming live ---
2026-01-15T14:23:03Z [ERROR] nginx: timeout exceeded

Press Ctrl+C to stop.

---

top

Full-screen live TUI dashboard of server metrics.

lynxdb top [flags]

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--interval	2s	Refresh interval (e.g., 2s, 5s)

Shows four panels:

Panel	Metrics
Ingest	Rate, today count, total count
Queries	Active, cache hit rate, views, tail sessions
Storage	Size, segments, memtable, indexes
Sources	Bar chart of events by source

Press q or Ctrl+C to quit.

Examples

lynxdb top
lynxdb top --interval 5s

---

watch

Re-run a query at regular intervals with a live-updating TUI display.

lynxdb watch [SPL2 query] [flags]

Flags

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--interval		5s	Refresh interval (e.g., 5s, 30s, 1m)
--since	-s	-15m	Time range for each execution
--diff		false	Show delta from previous run

Press q or Ctrl+C to quit.

Examples

# Watch error counts by source, refresh every 5s
lynxdb watch 'level=error | stats count by source'

# Custom interval
lynxdb watch 'level=error | stats count' --interval 10s

# Show changes between refreshes
lynxdb watch '| stats count by level' --since 1h --diff

---

diff

Compare query results across two consecutive time periods. Useful for spotting trends and anomalies.

lynxdb diff [SPL2 query] [flags]

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--period	1h	Compare last N vs previous N (e.g., 1h, 6h, 24h)

Examples

# Compare error counts: last hour vs previous hour
lynxdb diff 'level=error | stats count by source'

# Explicit period
lynxdb diff 'level=error | stats count by source' --period 1h

# Compare 5xx over 24h
lynxdb diff 'status>=500 | stats count by uri' --period 24h

Console Output

  Comparing: last 1h vs previous 1h

  source          NOW     PREV    CHANGE
  nginx           340     280     +21.4%
  api-gateway     120     150     -20.0%

  Total: 460 vs 430 (+7.0%)

See Also

• query for one-shot queries
• Shortcuts for quick access commands like count and sample
• Interactive Shell for an interactive REPL