POUNDCTL(8) System Manager's Manual POUNDCTL(8) NAME poundctl - control the pound daemon SYNOPSIS poundctl [-kVvh] [-C FILE] [-f FILE] [-i N] [-j] [-K FILE] [-S NAME] [-s SOCKET] [-T TEMPLATE-FILE] [-t TEMPLATE-NAME] COMMAND [/L/S/B] [ARG] DESCRIPTION Displays status and controls various objects in the running instance of pound(8) proxy server. The program communicates with the running pound program via a UNIX control socket, or remotely, via HTTP. The URL of the control socket is looked up in the following locatiions, in that order: ~/.poundctl Main poundctl configuration file. pound.cfg The program scans it for a Control statement and obtains control socket name from it. Argument of the -s command line option. The COMMAND argument instructs the program what action it is supposed to perform. Missing COMMAND is equivalent to list. All commands take the /L/S/B argument, which specifies the pound object to apply the command to. Here, L, S, and B stand for the identifiers of listener, service and back- end, correspondingly. For listeners and services, both numeric identifiers or symbolic names are allowed. Numeric identifiers refer to the ordinal number of the listener in the configuration file, or service within the en- closing listener (or in the configuration file, if L is -, see below). Symbolic names refer to the names assigned with the corresponding Listen- HTTP, ListenHTTPS, or Service statement in the configuration file. The identifier B is always numeric and refers to the ordinal number of the backend in the service. Depending on the command, either B or both /S/B/ may be omitted. For exam- ple, the following command will disable backend 2 in service 1 of listener 0: poundctl disable /0/1/2 In contrast, the following command disables the listener 0 itself: poundctl disable /0 A dash in place of L stands for global scope. Thus, e.g.: poundctl disable /-/1 disables the service 1 defined in the global scope of pound.cfg. The following commands are available: core Show core status: daemon PID, uptime, worker statistics, etc. list /L/S/B List status of the given object and its subordinates. Without argu- ment, shows all listeners and underlying objects. log [/] Show global log level log /L Show log level configured for listener L. log /[L] F Set log level F globally (if first argument is /) or for the lis- tener L. F must be a symbolic name of a built-in format or a format defined with the LogFormat configuration keyword. log -d [/L] Delete (clear) log level settings. Without arguments, or with / as an argument, clears global log level. This is equivalent to setting it to null. If the argument is /L, log level setting of the listener L is cleared, resulting in global log level being applied to it. enable /L/S/B Enable listener, service, or backend. on /L/S/B Same as enable. disable /L/S/B Disable listener, service, or backend. off /L/S/B Same as disable. delete /L/S KEY Delete the session with the given key. Notice that backend may not be specified. add /L/S/B KEY Add a session with the given key. CONFIGURATION Configuration is read from file .poundctl located in the user home direc- tory. It is not an error if that file does not exist. Alternative location of the configuration file can be specified via the POUNDCTL_CONF environment variable. Setting that variable to an empty value disables the configuration. The file consists of simple statements and sections, delimited by any amount of newlines. Comments are introduced by # sign and extend to the end of physical line where it appears. Simple statements consist of a keyword and value separated by any amount of whitespace. Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored. Sections begin with a keyword and value separated by any amount of white- space as well. They are followed by a newline and any number of statements belonging to that section. Sections end with a word End on a line by it- self. The following statements are defined: URL "URL" Sets the URL of the @command{pound} management socket. The value is either a file name of a UNIX socket file, or a remote URL (http or https). CAFile "FILE" Read certificate authority certificate from FILE. CAPath "DIR" Read certificate authority certificates from PEM files located in the directory DIR. ClientCert "FILE" Read client certificate and private key from FILE. Use this if pound configuration requires client authentication using the ClientCert statement. Verify bool Enables or disables peer certificate verification. The default is on. TemplateFile "FILE" Name of the template file (see below). TemplateName "NAME" Name of the template to use. TemplatePath "FILE" Search path for template files. Multiple Server sections can appear in the file. They provide a convenient way to organize management of multiple pound servers. You define the set- tings for each remote pound servers (URL, etc.) in a separate Server sec- tion identified by a unique name. Then, when you need to manage that par- ticular server, you identify it by using the -S NAME command line option. Syntactically, each section is Server "NAME" ... End where ellipsis denotes one or more of the following statements: URL, CAFile, CAPath, ClientCert, Verify. TEMPLATES Information received from pound is formatted as a JSON object. To produce human-readable output, poundctl uses a template, i.e. a text written in a domain-specific language expressly designed for that purpose. The template language complies, in general, with the specification in <https://pkg.go.dev/text/template>. Refer to poundctl.tmpl(5), for a de- tailed description. Templates are looked up in template file poundctl.tmpl. This file is searched in template search path which is, by default, the file .pound- ctl.tmpl in the user home directory and the file poundctl.tmpl (without the leading dot) in the program data directory, normally /usr/share/pound. The default search path can be changed from configuration file, using the Tem- platePath statement of by setting the environment variable POUND_TMPL_PATH, which see. To examine the default value of the search path, use the -V command line option. The template file to use can be requested from the configuration file, via the TemplateFile statement, or from the command line using the -t option. In this case, template search path in not searched and the supplied file is used verbatim. Unless instructed otherwise, poundctl uses the template "default". You can request another template name using the TemplateName configuration state- ment, or from command line, using the -T option. The default poundctl.tmpl file defines two templates: default and xml. OPTIONS -C FILE Load certificate authority files from FILE. FILE can also be a di- rectory containing CA certificates in PEM format. -f FILE Location of pound configuration file. -i N Sets indentation level for JSON output. -j JSON output format. -K FILE Load client certificate and key from FILE and send them to the server during handshake for authentication. -k Disable peer verification. -h Shows a short help output and exit. -S NAME Operate on server defined in .poundctl file, section Server "NAME". -s SOCKET Sets control socket pathname. SOCKET can also be a URL in the form: {http|https}://[USER[:PASS]@]HOSTNAME[:PORT][/PATH] where {|} denote alternative forms and [] enclose optional parts. -T TEMPLATE-FILE Sets the name of the template file to use. -t TEMPLATE-NAME Defines the name of the template to use instead of the "default". -V Print program version, compilation settings, and exit. -v Increases output verbosity level. ENVIRONMENT POUNDCTL_CONF Alternative name for the default configuration file. Unless ab- solute, the file is searched in the user home directory. Empty value restores built-in defaults. POUND_TMPL_PATH Overrides the template search path. The value is a column-delimited list of directories or file names. To locate the template file, the path is scanned left-to right. If an element is a regular file name (or a hard or symbolic link to a regular file), poundctl tries to open that file. If an element is a directory name, the program tries to open the file poundctl.tmpl in that directory. If opening succeeds, further scanning stops and templates are read from that file. SEE ALSO pound(8), poundctl.tmpl(5). AUTHOR Written by Robert Segall, Apsis GmbH, and Sergey Poznyakoff. REPORTING BUGS Report bugs to <gray@gnu.org>. You may also use github issue tracker at https://github.com/graygnuorg/pound/issues. COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2002-2010 Apsis GmbH. Copyright (C) 2018-2026 Sergey Poznyakoff License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/li- censes/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. poundctl April 24, 2026 POUNDCTL(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | CONFIGURATION | TEMPLATES | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT
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