lttng-enable-rotation - Man Page

Set an LTTng recording session rotation schedule

Synopsis

lttng [GENERAL OPTIONS] enable-rotation [--session=SESSION]
      (--timer=PERIODUS | --size=SIZE | --timer=PERIODUS --size=SIZE)

Description

The lttng enable-rotation command sets a recording session rotation schedule for:

With the --session=SESSION option

The recording session named SESSION​.

Without the --session option

The current recording session (see lttng-concepts(7) to learn more about the current recording session)​.

See lttng-concepts(7) to learn more about the recording session rotation and trace chunk concepts​.

With the --timer=PERIODUS option, the enable-rotation command sets a rotation schedule so that LTTng performs an automatic rotation at least every PERIODUS​.

With the --size=SIZE option, the enable-rotation command sets a rotation schedule so that LTTng performs an automatic rotation every time the total size of the flushed part of the current trace chunk is at least SIZE​.

For both the --timer and --size options, LTTng checks the schedule condition periodically using the monitor timers of the event record channels of the selected recording session (see the --monitor-timer option of the lttng-enable-channel(1) command)​. This means that:

You may combine the --timer and --size options​.

See the lttng-concepts(7) to learn how LTTng names a trace chunk archive directory​.

See the “Examples” section below for usage examples​.

Unset a recording session rotation schedule with the lttng-disable-rotation(1) command​.
Important

You may only use the enable-rotation command when all of the following conditions are true:

  • The selected recording session was created in normal mode or in network streaming mode (see lttng-create(1))​.
  • No event record channel was created with a configured trace file count or size limit (see the --tracefile-size and --tracefile-count options of the lttng-enable-channel(1) command)​.

For a given recording session, LTTng only performs an automatic rotation when it’s not currently performing a rotation​.

Options

See lttng(1) for GENERAL OPTIONS​.

Rotation schedule condition

--size=SIZE

Set a rotation schedule so that LTTng performs an automatic rotation every time the total size of the flushed part of the current trace chunk is at least SIZE bytes​.

The k ​(KiB), M ​(MiB), and G ​(GiB) suffixes are supported​.

--timer=PERIODUS

Set a rotation schedule so that LTTng performs an automatic rotation approximately every PERIODUS microseconds​.

The ms ​(milliseconds), s ​(seconds), m ​(minutes), and h ​(hours) suffixes are supported​.

Recording target

-s SESSION, --session=SESSION

Set a rotation schedule for the recording session named SESSION instead of the current recording session​.

Program information

-h,  --help

Show help​.

This option attempts to launch /usr/bin/man to view this manual page​. Override the manual pager path with the LTTNG_MAN_BIN_PATH environment variable​.

--list-options

List available command options and quit​.

Exit Status

0

Success

1

Command error

2

Undefined command

3

Fatal error

4

Command warning (something went wrong during the command)

Environment

LTTNG_ABORT_ON_ERROR

Set to 1 to abort the process after the first error is encountered​.

LTTNG_HOME

Path to the LTTng home directory​.

Defaults to $HOME​.

Useful when the Unix user running the commands has a non-writable home directory​.

LTTNG_LIST_LEGACY

Set to 1 to use the legacy output format (LTTng ​2​.14 and earlier) for the lttng-list(1) command instead of the modern output format​.

Note that the legacy output doesn’t show anything related to features introduced after LTTng ​2​.14​.

LTTNG_MAN_BIN_PATH

Absolute path to the manual pager to use to read the LTTng command-line help (with lttng-help(1) or with the --help option) instead of /usr/bin/man​.

LTTNG_NO_UTF_8

Set to 1 to NOT emit multi-byte UTF-8 sequences, even if the locale claims to support it​.

LTTNG_SESSION_CONFIG_XSD_PATH

Path to the directory containing the session.xsd recording session configuration XML schema​.

LTTNG_SESSIOND_PATH

Absolute path to the LTTng session daemon binary (see lttng-sessiond(8)) to spawn from the lttng-create(1) command​.

The --sessiond-path general option overrides this environment variable​.

LTTNG_TERM_COLOR

Controls when to emit terminal SGR codes in the output​.

The NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this​.

One of:

auto (default)

Only emit SGR codes when the standard output is connected to a color-capable terminal​.

always

Always emit SGR codes​.

never

Never emit SGR codes​.

NO_COLOR

If set and not empty, then it’s equivalent to setting LTTNG_TERM_COLOR to never​.

See NO_COLOR <https://no-color.org/> to learn more​.

Files

$LTTNG_HOME/.lttngrc

Unix user’s LTTng runtime configuration​.

This is where LTTng stores the name of the Unix user’s current recording session between executions of lttng(1)​. lttng-create(1) and lttng-set-session(1) set the current recording session​.

$LTTNG_HOME/lttng-traces

Default output directory of LTTng traces in local and snapshot modes​.

Override this path with the --output option of the lttng-create(1) command​.

$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng

Unix user’s LTTng runtime and configuration directory​.

$LTTNG_HOME/.lttng/sessions

Default directory containing the Unix user’s saved recording session configurations (see lttng-save(1) and lttng-load(1))​.

/usr/local/etc/lttng/sessions

Directory containing the system-wide saved recording session configurations (see lttng-save(1) and lttng-load(1))​.

Note

$LTTNG_HOME defaults to the value of the HOME environment variable​.

Examples

Example ​1. ​Set the size-based rotation schedule of the current recording session​.

See the --size option​.

$ lttng disable-rotation --size=256M

Example ​2. ​Set the periodic rotation schedule of a specific recording session​.

See the --timer and --session options​.

$ lttng disable-rotation --session=my-session --timer=5m

Resources

Thanks

Special thanks to Michel Dagenais and the DORSAL laboratory <http://www.dorsal.polymtl.ca/> at École Polytechnique de Montréal for the LTTng journey​.

Also thanks to the Ericsson teams working on tracing which helped us greatly with detailed bug reports and unusual test cases​.

See Also

lttng(1), lttng-create(1), lttng-disable-rotation(1), lttng-rotate(1), lttng-concepts(7)

Referenced By

lttng(1), lttng-concepts(7), lttng-disable-rotation(1), lttng-rotate(1).

20 March 2026 LTTng 2.16.0 LTTng Manual