open-consul/website/source/docs/commands/index.html.markdown

---
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Commands"
sidebar_current: "docs-commands"
description: |-
  Consul is controlled via a very easy to use command-line interface (CLI). Consul is only a single command-line application: `consul`. This application then takes a subcommand such as agent or members. The complete list of subcommands is in the navigation to the left.
---

# Consul Commands (CLI)

Consul is controlled via a very easy to use command-line interface (CLI).
Consul is only a single command-line application: `consul`. This application
then takes a subcommand such as "agent" or "members". The complete list of
subcommands is in the navigation to the left.

The `Consul` CLI is a well-behaved command line application. In erroneous
cases, a non-zero exit status will be returned. It also responds to `-h` and `--help`
as you'd most likely expect. And some commands that expect input accept
"-" as a parameter to tell Consul to read the input from stdin.

To view a list of the available commands at any time, just run `consul` with
no arguments:

```text
$ consul
usage: consul [--version] [--help] <command> [<args>]

Available commands are:
    agent          Runs a Consul agent
    event          Fire a new event
    exec           Executes a command on Consul nodes
    force-leave    Forces a member of the cluster to enter the "left" state
    info           Provides debugging information for operators
    join           Tell Consul agent to join cluster
    keygen         Generates a new encryption key
    keyring        Manages gossip layer encryption keys
    leave          Gracefully leaves the Consul cluster and shuts down
    lock           Execute a command holding a lock
    members        Lists the members of a Consul cluster
    monitor        Stream logs from a Consul agent
    reload         Triggers the agent to reload configuration files
    rtt            Estimates round trip times between nodes
    version        Prints the Consul version
    watch          Watch for changes in Consul
```

To get help for any specific command, pass the `-h` flag to the relevant
subcommand. For example, to see help about the `join` subcommand:

```text
$ consul join -h
Usage: consul join [options] address ...

  Tells a running Consul agent (with "consul agent") to join the cluster
  by specifying at least one existing member.

Options:

  -rpc-addr=127.0.0.1:8400  Address to the RPC server of the agent you want to contact
                            to send this command. If this isn't specified, the command checks the
                            CONSUL_RPC_ADDR env variable.
  -wan                      Joins a server to another server in the WAN pool
```