Welcome to Nyx

Nyx is a command-line monitor for Tor. With this you can get detailed real-time information about your relay such as bandwidth usage, connections, logs, and much more.

Nyx's latest version is 2.1.0, released January 12th, 2019.

What does Nyx provide?
bandwidth «Bandwidth Graph

Bandwidth used by Tor. You can press 'i' to pick the graphing interval, or 's' to show other usage statistics.

event log «Event Log

Tor logs a wealth of information about itself. We present it, colorized and deduplicated. Press 'e' to select what events are logged and 'f' to filter to just what you want.

connections «Connections

Connection data similar to netstat or lsof, but correlated with Tor relay information to make it much richer. Press 'enter' for more details, 's' to sort, and 'd' to see raw descriptor data.

configuration editor «Configuration Editor

Editor to change Tor's setting on the fly, with usage information from its manual. Press 'enter' to change Tor settings and 'w' to write your changes to disk.

torrc «Torrc

Provides your torrc with line numbers and syntax highlighting. Comments can be stripped by pressing 's'.

interpreter «Interpreter

Integration with Stem's interpreter, providing raw controller access, irc-style commands like /help, tab completion, history scrollback, and a python prompt.

menu «... and more!

That's just the tip of the iceberg. All pages within Nyx provide help information when you press 'h' and menu in response to 'm'. So go explore!

Fact & Question

Usage

Development

Download

Nyx is available Mac OS, Linux, and BSD but not Windows. Find your platform below to get started. For what's changed see our change log.


PyPI Python Package Index

You can install our latest release from the Python Package Index (PyPI) with pip...

% sudo pip install nyx
Mac Mac OS

On Mac OS you can easily install with both the pip command above and brew...

% brew install nyx
Debian Debian

Package maintained by Dererk. Use sudo pip install nyx if this doesn't work.

% sudo apt-get install nyx
Ubuntu Ubuntu

Package derived from Debian for Ubuntu. Use sudo pip install nyx if this doesn't work.

% sudo apt-get install nyx
Fedora Fedora

Package maintained by Juan.

% sudo dnf install nyx
Gentoo Gentoo

Package by Anthony Basile for Gentoo.

% sudo emerge nyx
Arch Linux Arch Linux

Package by Alex for Arch Linux...

% pacman -S nyx
Slackware Slackware

Package maintained by Markus for Slackware.

FreeBSD FreeBSD

Port maintained by Carlo for FreeBSD.

% pkg install security/nyx
OpenBSD OpenBSD

Port maintained by pascal for OpenBSD.

% pkg_add nyx
NetBSD NetBSD

Port maintained by Riastradh for NetBSD.

% pkg_add nyx
File File

File and signature upon which the above packages are based (instructions). You can directly install from this with...

% pip install nyx-2.0.4.tar.gz
Git Source Repository

For those who want to live on the bleeding edge or contribute, you can download Nyx's git repository with...

% git clone https://git.torproject.org/nyx.git
Configuration

Like many terminal applications Nyx can be customized through a configuration file. By default ~/.nyx/nyxrc, though you can specify one with nyx --config /path/to/nyxrc.

Configurations are a simple series of key/value pairs. See Stem for details. For example...

acs_support false
color_override blue  # make our UI predominately blue
logged_events BW, NOTICE, WARN, ERR
      

General Options

Option Default Description
data_directory ~/.nyx Location data is cached to. To avoid caching anything to disk specify 'data_directory disabled'.
password Tor controller password. If unset you will be prompted for a password when one is required to authenticate.

Use of this is discouraged. To authenticate with tor non-interactively please use cookie authentication instead.
tor_chroot Chroot jail tor resides within. Most common on FreeBSD, if tor is running within a jail then use this to specify the path prefix we should use when looking for tor files on disk.
show_bits false Shows bandwidth measurements in bits if true, and bytes if false.
confirm_quit true Asks the user to confirm when pressing 'q' to quit if true.
color_interface true Uses colors in Nyx's interface if true. Monochrome is false.
color_override Replaces most color with this hue. Options available are red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
unicode_support true Render text as unicode if true. Only ASCII is rendered if false.
acs_support true Uses ACS (alternate character set) for nice borders if true. Borders are replaced with ASCII pipe characters if false.

Update Rates

Option Default Description
redraw_rate 5 Seconds to await user input before redrawing.
connection_rate 5 Seconds between querying connections.
resource_rate 5 Seconds between querying process resource usage.
port_usage_rate 5 Seconds between querying processes using ports.

Logging

Option Default Description
logged_events NOTICE,
WARN,
ERR,
NYX_NOTICE,
NYX_WARNING,
NYX_ERROR
Comma separated list of events to be initially logged, similar to the --log argument.
deduplicate_log true Hides duplicate log messages.
prepopulate_log true Populates with events that occure before we started.
logging_filter Regex filter for log messages that are shown.
write_logs_to Writes logs that occure as we run to this path.
max_log_size 1000 Maximum number of log messages.

Graphing

Option Default Description
graph_stat bandwidth Statistic to be graphed. Options are...
  • none - hide the graph
  • bandwidth - downloaded/uploaded
  • connections - inbound/outbound connections
  • resources - cpu/memory usage
graph_interval each second Graph sampling interval. Options are...
  • each second
  • 5 seconds
  • 30 seconds
  • minutely
  • 15 minute
  • 30 minute
  • hourly
  • daily
graph_bound max_local Bounding for the graph min and max. Options are...
  • global_max - global maximum
  • local_max - local maximum
  • tight - local maximum/minimum
graph_height 7 Height of the graph.
max_graph_width 300 Maximum number of samplings.

Tor Configuration

Option Default Description
config_order MAN_PAGE_ENTRY,
NAME,
IS_SET
Order for tor config options. Options are...
  • NAME
  • VALUE
  • VALUE_TYPE
  • CATEGORY
  • USAGE
  • SUMMARY
  • DESCRIPTION
  • MAN_PAGE_ENTRY
  • IS_SET
show_private_options false Shows configurations with a '__option' prefix.
show_virtual_options false Shows unsettable tor configurations.

Connections

Option Default Description
connection_order CATEGORY,
IP_ADDRESS,
UPTIME
Order for connections. Options are...
  • CATEGORY
  • UPTIME
  • IP_ADDRESS
  • PORT
  • FINGERPRINT
  • NICKNAME
  • COUNTRY
resolve_processes true Shows processes for SOCKS and CONTROL connections.
show_addresses true Shows addresses of connections.

Component Visibility

Option Default Description
show_graph true Shows the graph.
show_accounting true Shows accounting stats if AccountingMax is set.
show_log true Shows the event log.
show_connections true Shows connection information.
show_config true Shows tor's configuration.
show_torrc true Shows the torrc.
show_interpreter true Shows the control interpreter.
Contact
irc Relay tips? System administration question? tor-relays@ is a list of relay operators for relay operators. You can also contact Nyx's author.
irc Want real-time help? Give OFTC's #tor channel a try.
bugtracker Running into a bug? To report technical problems drop us a line on our bug tracker.