TRACE-CMD-LISTEN(1)

💅 trace-cmd-listen — the libtracefs manual page, but make it make sense

okay so bestie, you know how trace-cmd has a whole little family of subcommands? this is the one that just... waits. it sits there, cute and patient, listening on a port for your other machines to call it up. it's giving "i'm not clingy, i'm just available." 🎀

this page lives in the libtracefs manual, and honestly? it ate.

---

✨ NAME ✨

trace-cmd-listen — literally just sit there and listen for an incoming connection so you can record some tracing. that's the whole vibe. 👑

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

trace-cmd listen -p port [OPTIONS]

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so trace-cmd(1) listen — real name trace-cmd-listen — sets up a port and just... listens. it's waiting for connections from other hosts that are running trace-cmd-record(1) with the -N option. iykyk. 🦋

when a connection actually happens, and that remote host starts sending data, it creates a file called trace.HOST:PORT.dat. and no, that's not a typo, that's the actual filename format:

• HOST is the name of the remote host
• PORT is the port that the remote host used to connect with

so you literally get a file per buddy. iconic. ✨

---

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -p port — specifies the port to listen to. this is kind of the whole point, ngl.
• -D — sends trace-cmd listen into daemon mode so it runs in the background. main character energy: present but not making a whole scene about it. 💅
• -V — listen on a vsocket instead. useful for tracing between host and guest VMs. virtual machine besties, this one's for you 🫶
• -d dir — specifies a directory to write the data files into. keep your mess contained, queen.
• -o filename — overrides the default trace in the trace.HOST:PORT.dat that gets created when a remote host connects. so you can name your files whatever, not just trace.
• -l filename — writes the output messages to a log file instead of standard output. bye stdout, hello file 📝
• --verbose[=level] — sets the log level. supported log levels are "none", "critical", "error", "warning", "info", "debug", "all", or their identifiers "0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6". setting the log level to a specific value enables all logs from that level and all previous levels. if you don't specify one, the level defaults to "info".

example: enable all critical, error and warning logs

trace-cmd listen --verbose=warning

fr fr, that --verbose ladder is a whole vibe check: pick a level and you get that level plus everything chiller below it. no gatekeeping. 🔥

---

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

the whole squad, in order:

trace-cmd(1), trace-cmd-record(1), trace-cmd-report(1), trace-cmd-start(1), trace-cmd-stop(1), trace-cmd-extract(1), trace-cmd-reset(1), trace-cmd-split(1), trace-cmd-list(1)

---

💜 AUTHOR 💜

written by Steven Rostedt, <rostedt@goodmis.org[1]> — the actual legend. we stan. 👑

---

🧚 RESOURCES 🧚

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/trace-cmd/trace-cmd.git/

go look at the source, it's right there, i'm not gonna gatekeep it 🦋

---

🍓 COPYING 🍓

Copyright (C) 2010 Red Hat, Inc. free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL).

---

⭐ NOTES ⭐

1. rostedt@goodmis.org mailto:rostedt@goodmis.org

---

okay that's the page!! 💖 every single flag, path, level and name is exactly where it should be — nothing dropped, nothing invented, no cap.

and for the cute sign-off: this is the libtracefs manual, dated 03/09/2026, and it's page TRACE-CMD-LISTEN(1) because obviously. slay, go listen on a port, bye bestie 👋✨🎀