bigchaindb/docs/server/source/server-reference/bigchaindb-cli.md

Command Line Interface (CLI)

The command-line command to interact with BigchainDB Server is bigchaindb.

bigchaindb --help

Show help for the bigchaindb command. bigchaindb -h does the same thing.

bigchaindb --version

Show the version number. bigchaindb -v does the same thing.

bigchaindb configure

Generate a local configuration file (which can be used to set some or all BigchainDB node configuration settings). It will ask you for the values of other configuration settings. If you press Enter for a value, it will use the default value.

At this point only one database backend is supported: localmongodb.

If you use the -c command-line option, it will generate the file at the specified path:

bigchaindb -c path/to/new_config.json configure localmongodb

If you don't use the -c command-line option, the file will be written to $HOME/.bigchaindb (the default location where BigchainDB looks for a config file, if one isn't specified).

If you use the -y command-line option, then there won't be any interactive prompts: it will use the default values for all the other configuration settings.

bigchaindb -y configure localmongodb

bigchaindb show-config

Show the values of the BigchainDB node configuration settings.

bigchaindb init

Create a backend database (Local MongoDB), all database tables/collections, various backend database indexes, and the genesis block.

bigchaindb drop

Drop (erase) the backend database (a Local MongoDB database). You will be prompted to make sure. If you want to force-drop the database (i.e. skipping the yes/no prompt), then use bigchaindb -y drop

bigchaindb start

Start BigchainDB. It always begins by trying a bigchaindb init first. See the note in the documentation for bigchaindb init. The database initialization step is optional and can be skipped by passing the --no-init flag i.e. bigchaindb start --no-init.

Options

The log level for the console can be set via the option --log-level or its abbreviation -l. Example:

$ bigchaindb --log-level INFO start

The allowed levels are DEBUG, INFO , WARNING, ERROR, and CRITICAL. For an explanation regarding these levels please consult the Logging Levels section of Python's documentation.

For a more fine-grained control over the logging configuration you can use the configuration file as documented under Configuration Settings.