SOFTFLOWCTL(8)

💖 SOFTFLOWCTL 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual for softflowctl, from the System Manager's Manual (section 8, so you KNOW it's a sysadmin baddie). it's the remote control program for softflowd — like, it's the group chat that lets you text your daemon and tell it what to do. 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

softflowctl [-h] [-c ctl_sock] command

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one command, and your daemon listens. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so like, softflowctl is a remote control program used to control a running softflowd(8) daemon. that's the whole job. it's giving "i'm the one with the remote" energy fr fr.

the command line options are as follows:

• -c ctlsock — specify an alternate location for the remote control socket. the default is /var/run/softflowd.ctl in case you were wondering. 🫶
• -h — display command line usage information. the classic "help me please" flag, iconic, we love her.

👑 COMMANDS 👑

• shutdown — ask softflowd(8) to gracefully exit. this is equivalent to sending it a SIGTERM or SIGINT. very "let's end this on good terms" of you.
• exit — ask softflowd(8) to immediately exit. no flow expiry processing or data export is performed. like, it's gone, no goodbye, no nothing. 😭
• expire-all — immediately expire all tracked flows. every single one. bye bye.
• delete-all — immediately delete all tracked flows. no flow expiry processing or data export is performed. so like... they're just deleted. periodt. 💀
• statistics — return statistics collected by softflowd(8) on expired flows. numbers! data! the tea! 🍓
• debug+ — increase the debugging level of softflowd(8). more words, more chaos, more knowledge.
• debug- — decrease the debugging level. less noise. a lil chill era.
• stop-gather — stops network data collection by softflowd(8). it's napping. let her rest. 🙈
• start-gather — resumes network data collection. wake up bestie, we're collecting again. 🔥
• dump-flows — return information on all tracked flows. the whole receipts folder, laid out.
• timeouts — print information on flow timeout parameters. lowkey niche, highkey useful.
• send-template — resend a NetFlow v.9 template record before the next flow export. has no effect for other flow export versions. so if you're on v.9, slay; if not, it literally does nothing, don't @ me. ✨

💀 BUGS 💀

all times are unconditionally displayed in UTC, regardless of the system timezone. so like, don't come for her about your local time, she's not doing timezone math for you. it's giving "UTC or nothing."

please report bugs in softflowctl to https://github.com/irino/softflowd/issues 🐛

🧚 AUTHORS 🧚

• Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org>
• Hitoshi Irino (current maintainer) <irino@sfc.wide.ad.jp>

the icons who built her. we stan. 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• softflowd(8)

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from the Debian crew, dated October 18, 2002 — yeah she's vintage, she's a classic, she's been serving since before some of us could read. respect the elders. 🎀✨💖