Changes to command line options

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Most command line options available in Logstash Forwarder have been removed and migrated to config file options. The only mandatory command line option for running Filebeat is -c followed by the path to the config file. If you used command line options with Logstash Forwarder, make sure that you add your options to the configuration file. For naming changes, see Renamed options.

Filebeat does provide command line options that are common to all Beats. For more details about these options, see Command reference.

Renamed options

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The following command line options have been renamed and moved to the config file. Also see Changed configuration file options for a list of configuration file options that were completely removed or replaced by options specified in libbeat.

Command Line Option Config File Option Description

-config

-c command line option and config_dir

The config option was split into two parts. You use the -c command line option to specify the location of the base (required) config file when you start Filebeat. To use additional config files, you specify the config_dir configuration option.

The config_dir option specifies the path to the directory that contains additional configuration files. This option MUST point to a directory other than the directory where the main Filebeat config file resides.

-idle-timeout

idle_timeout was removed. Libbeat is used for publishing logs.

-spool-size

queue.mem.events

spool_size was moved to the config file and removed as a flag.

-harvester-buff-size

harvester_buffer_size

harvester_buffer_size was moved to the config file and removed as a flag. You can now configure the buffer size separately for each harvester.

-tail

tail_files

tail_files was moved to the config file and removed as a flag. You can now configure this option separately for each input.

-cpuProfileFile

cpuProfileFile was removed. You can use the profiling options of libbeat instead. For more details on profiling, see https://github.com/elastic/libbeat/issues/122.

-quiet

quiet was removed. Libbeat is now used for logging, so you must use the libbeat logging options instead.