TRAFFIC_SERVER(8)

📦
version 9.2.5 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu questing

💖 TRAFFIC_SERVER 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the manual page for traffic_server — that's the actual Apache Traffic Server binary itself, sitting pretty in section (8) of your man pages. yes, section 8. that's the system administration section. main character energy only. 👑

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

ngl, the original page just... puts the NAME line here and then immediately jumps to OPTIONS. no paragraph, no lore, nothing. iconic behaviour honestly. so: it's Traffic Server. that's the vibe. moving on. 💅

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • -a, --accepts_thread — bestie the manpage genuinely gives us no description here. not a single word. so I'm not gonna make one up, that would be lying and lying is not slay. 🫶
  • -B TAGS, --action_tags TAGS — same situation. listed, no blurb. mysterious. very mysterious. 🕵️♀️
  • --bind_stdout FILE — this is the file that Traffic Server's stdout stream gets bound to. that's where the standard out goes. to that file. 📄
  • --bind_stderr FILE — and this is the file that Traffic Server's stderr stream gets bound to. standard error, meet file. 💌
  • -C 'CMD [ARGS]', --command 'CMD [ARGS]' — run a Traffic Server maintenance command. these do admin-type actions or queries against your Traffic Server. heads up: some of these commands take an argument (looking at you, help and verify_global_plugin). so to run a command with its argument, you wrap the CMD and its argument in quotes. for example, if you want help for the verify_global_plugin command, format it like this:
traffic_server -C "help verify_global_plugin"

and here's the whole lineup of supported commands, no cap:

  • list — lists the sizes of the host database and cache index, plus the storage available to the cache. 📊
  • check — checks the cache for inconsistencies or corruption. it does not make any changes to the data stored in the cache. it does require a scan of the contents of the cache, so on a big cache it can take a very long time. bring snacks. 🍓
  • clear — clears the entire cache, both the document cache and the host database cache. all data in the cache is lost, and the cache gets reconfigured based on the current description of database sizes and available storage.
  • clear_cache — clears the document cache only. all documents in the cache are lost, and the cache is reconfigured based on the current description of database sizes and available storage.
  • clear_hostdb — clears the entire host database cache. all host name resolution information is lost.
  • verify_config — loads the config and verifies that Traffic Server comes up correctly. ✅
  • verify_global_plugin PLUGIN_SO_FILE — loads a global plugin's shared object file and verifies it meets the minimal global plugin API requirements.
  • verify_remap_plugin PLUGIN_SO_FILE — loads a remap plugin's shared object file and verifies it meets the minimal remap plugin API requirements.
  • help [CMD] — gets you a short description of a command. like, 'help clear' prints a description of the clear maintenance command. and if you pass no argument to help, you get a list of all the supported maintenance commands printed out with a brief description of each. the full menu, basically. 🍽️
  • -f, --disable_freelist — okay so to make things faster, traffic_server caches commonly used data structures in a set of free object lists. this option turns those caches off, which makes traffic_server call malloc(3) for every single allocation. should you commonly need this? no. but it might help in memory-constrained environments, or when the working set is highly variable. so like, situational. 💀
  • -F, --disable_pfreelist — disables the free list in ProxyAllocator, which is the stuff -f left out. and yes, this option includes the functionality of -f. so it's -f plus extra. ate. 🔥
  • -R LEVEL, --regression LEVEL — listed with no description in the original. no notes. 🤷♀️
  • -r TEST, --regression_test TEST — also no description. also no notes.
  • -l, --regression_list — if Traffic Server was built with tests enabled, this option lists the available tests. that "if" is doing a lot of work, bestie. ⚠️
  • -T TAGS, --debug_tags TAGS — no description given. mysterious again.
  • -i COUNT, --interval COUNT — no description given.
  • -m COUNT, --maxRecords — the maximum number of entries in metrics and configuration variables. the default is 1600, which is also the minimum. so don't go lower, that's the floor. you may need to raise this if you're running plugins that create metrics. 📈
  • -M, --remote_management — tells the process it should expect to be managed by traffic_manager. and listen: this option should not be used except by that process. so hands off unless you're traffic_manager. 🙈
  • -n COUNT, --net_threads COUNT — no description given.
  • -k, --clear_hostdb — no description given.
  • -K, --clear_cache — no description given.
  • --accept_mss MSS — no description given.
  • -t MSECS, --poll_timeout MSECS — no description given.
  • -h, --help — prints usage information and exits. the classic. the icon. 🎀
  • -p PORT, --httpport PORT — no description given.
  • -U COUNT, --udp_threads COUNT — no description given.
  • -V, --version — prints version information and exits. ⭐

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • PROXY_REMOTE_MGMT — this environment variable forces traffic_server to believe that it's being managed by traffic_manager. manifesting, basically. ✨
  • PROXY_AUTO_EXIT — when this environment variable is set to an integral number of seconds, traffic_server will exit that many seconds after startup. it's primarily useful for testing. ⏰

🦋 SIGNALS 🦋

  • SIGINT, SIGTERM — on SIGINT and SIGTERM, traffic_server exits. bye bestie. 👋
  • SIGUSR1 — on SIGUSR1, traffic_server logs its current memory usage. 💾
  • SIGUSR2 — on SIGUSR2, traffic_server re-opens its standard error and standard out file descriptors. fresh start, love that for them. 🔄

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

2026, dev@trafficserver.apache.org

and that's the whole page, bestie — this was version 9.2, dated Feb 12, 2026, brought to you by the Apache Traffic Server crew. go forth and configure responsibly. 💖✨🎀

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