I3-DUMP-LOG(1)

✨ i3-dump-log — the manual, but make it cute ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to i3-dump-log 💖 this is the little tool from the i3 manual (section 1, the user commands girlies) that dumps the i3 SHM log. that's the whole name, that's the whole vibe. 🫶

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

i3-dump-log [-s <socketpath>] [-f]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so here's the tea, and it's actually kind of iconic: debug versions of i3 automatically use 1% of your RAM (but 25 MiB max) to store full debug log output. yes, 1% of your RAM, slay. 🌈

and why would it do that? because it's extremely helpful for bugreports and figuring out what is going on, and it does it without permanently logging to a file. no dusty log files lying around, we love a low-waste queen. ✨

with i3-dump-log, you can dump the SHM log to stdout. that's it, that's the job, and it ate. 💅

the flags, bestie:

• -s <socketpath> — the socket path option, right there in the synopsis, no cap. 🎀
• -f — this one works like tail -f, i.e. the process does not terminate after dumping the log, but prints new lines as they appear. it's giving "we stay streaming". 🔥

lowkey important: -f means the process keeps running forever-ish, printing new lines as they show up. so if you wanted it to end, it will not, and that's on purpose. 😭

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🦋 EXAMPLE 🦋

here's the moment you've been waiting for, the main character example:

i3-dump-log | gzip -9 > /tmp/i3-log.gz

pipe it, gzip it, yeet it into /tmp/i3-log.gz. obsessed. 🌸

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• i3(1) — go read it, iykyk. 💜

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Michael Stapelberg and contributors — thank you for your service, fr fr. 🙈

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and that's the page!! brought to you by i3 4.25.1, dated 01/01/1980 (yes bestie, 1980, we don't ask questions, we just vibe 🧚). stay logged, stay hydrated, and remember: 1% of your RAM is a small price to pay for full debug output. 💖✨🍓