LIGHTS(1)

✨ LIGHTS(1) ✨

okay bestie, so lights is a thing in the DNSSEC-Tools world and it's literally the Rollover Overview GUI Display 💅 like that's the whole vibe, that's the name, we're doing this.

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

lights [options]

that's it. that's the whole summoning ritual. ✨

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so lights gives you a very simple overview of the rollover status of a set of zones. the rollover status counts show up in a "traffic light" display 🚦 which, iconic. meanwhile blinkenlights is the one giving you a detailed display of the roll status of a set of zones. so like, lights is the chill low-spoons version.

also lights gives very little control over rollerd, unlike the way blinkenlights does. the only thing lights can do is halt rollerd's execution. that's it. one (1) power. 💀

now, how does it get the rollover status? two ways, pick your fighter:

• default mode: rollerd gets contacted via the rollctl command.
• -rrf mode: if you pass the -rrf option, zone status is read directly from a rollrec file.

the default method gets the status straight from rollerd, and the user need not know the location of the relevant rollrec file — cute, low effort, love that for you. BUT. that method will not get zone status until rollerd is actually available to respond to the information request. so if rollerd is out here ghosting you, you're just waiting. 👻

consequently, the alternate method lets lights bypass communicating with rollerd entirely, so you don't have to wait for rollerd to be available. slay.

so a window pops up with three colored sections:

• green — a count of those zones that are in "normal" status, meaning they are not in rollover.
• yellow — a count of those zones that are in rollover.
• red — a count of those zones that are in need of attention.

a common cause for that last red state is because a zone is in phase 5 of KSK rollover and is waiting for its parent zone to publish the child's new DS record. so if you see red, it's giving "waiting on parent" energy. 🧚

clicking on the color rows in the main window brings up a dialog box that lists the zones in that state. BUT, important: this list will not automatically update as zones change rollover state. it's a snapshot, not a live feed. refresh it yourself, bestie. 🙈

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

lights supports the following options.

• -interval wait-time — Interval between checks of zone rollover status. By default, wait-time is given in minutes. This can be adjusted by specifying one of the following time-unit suffixes.
  • s — seconds
  • m — minutes
  • h — hours

Examples:

• -interval 24 — 24 minutes
• -interval 24s — 24 seconds
• -interval 24m — 24 minutes
• -interval 24h — 24 hours

• -rrf rollrec-file — A rollrec file to be read for zone status.
• -labels — Labels will be given for each color field in the GUI.
• -verbose — Give verbose output.
• -help — Give a usage message and exit.
• -Version — Displays the version information for lights and the DNSSEC-Tools package.

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🌈 REQUIREMENTS 🌈

lights is implemented in Perl/Tk, so both Perl and Perl/Tk must be installed on your system. no Perl/Tk, no lights, no vibes. 😭

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💀 KNOWN ISSUES 💀

the following are known issues. these will be resolved in the fullness of time. (manifesting ✨)

• Resizing the window leaves the color blobs in their original size. This is an issue with the Tk widget used to display the color stripes. Other display methods are being investigated...

so yeah, resize the window and the color blobs just... stay. they're committed to the bit. 🫶

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👑 COPYRIGHT 👑

Copyright 2010-2014 SPARTA, Inc. All rights reserved. See the COPYING file included with the DNSSEC-Tools package for details.

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Wayne Morrison, tewok@tislabs.com

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

blinkenlights(8), bubbles(8), rollerd(8), rollrec(5)

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and that's the whole page bestie, no cap. this was shipped with perl v5.42.0 and dated 2025-07-23 — so go forth, read your traffic lights, and remember: green means normal, yellow means rolling, red means somebody's parent zone needs to get it together. periodt. 💜🌸🦋