Man page 8 : rtmon

rtmon - listens to and monitors RTnetlink

rtmon "[ options ] file FILE [ all | LISTofOBJECTS ]"

This manual page documents briefly the

rtmon command.

rtmon listens on netlinksocket and monitors routing table changes. rtmoncan be started before the first network configuration command is issued. For example if you insert:

rtmon file /var/log/rtmon.log in a startup script, you will be able to view the full history later. Certainly, it is possible to start rtmon at any time. It prepends the history with the state snapshot dumped at the moment of starting.

rtmon supports the following options:

-Version

    Print version and exit.

help

    Show summary of options.

file FILE [ all | LISTofOBJECTS ]

    Log output to FILE. LISTofOBJECTS is the list of object types that we want to monitor. It may contain 'link', 'address', 'route' and 'all'. 'link' specifies the network device, 'address' the protocol (IP or IPv6) address on a device, 'route' the routing table entry and 'all' does what the name says.

-family [ inet | inet6 | link | help ]

    Specify protocol family. 'inet' is IPv4, 'inet6' is IPv6, 'link' means that no networking protocol is involved and 'help' prints usage information.

-4

    Use IPv4. Shortcut for -family inet.

-6

    Use IPv6. Shortcut for -family inet6.

-0

    Use a special family identifier meaning that no networking protocol is involved. Shortcut for -family link.

# rtmon file /var/log/rtmon.log

    Log to file /var/log/rtmon.log, then run:

# ip monitor file /var/log/rtmon.log

    to display logged output from file.

R ip (8)

rtmon was written by Alexey Kuznetsov <>.

This manual page was written by Michael Prokop <>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others).