Options affect how daemon should be working. Commands assume the daemon is already running. Commands give access to specific services provided by the daemon.
| `--log-file` | Full path to the log file. Example (mind file permissions): <br/>`./monerod --log-file=/var/log/monero/mainnet/monerod.log`
| `--log-level` | `0-4` with `0` being minimal logging and `4` being full tracing. Defaults to `0`. These are general presets and do not directly map to severity levels. For example, even with minimal `0`, you may see some most important `INFO` entries. Temporarily changing to `1` allows for much better understanding of how the full node operates. Example: <br/>`./monerod --log-level=1`
| `--max-log-file-size` | Soft limit in bytes for the log file (=104850000 by default, which is just under 100MB). Once log file grows past that limit, `monerod` creates next log file with a `-YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS` UTC timestamp postfix. In production deployments, you would probably prefer to use established solutions like logrotate instead.
| `--config-file` | Full path to the configuration file. By default `monerod` looks for `bitmonero.conf` in Monero [data directory](/interacting/monerod/overview/#data-directory). TODO: describe configuration file syntax.
| `--data-dir` | Full path to data directory. This is where the blockchain, log files, and p2p network memory are stored. For defaults and details see [data directory](/interacting/monerod/overview/#data-directory).
| `--detach` | Go to background (decouple from the terminal). This is useful for long-running / server scenarios. Typically, you will also want to manage `monerod` daemon with systemd or similar. By default `monerod` runs in a foreground.
| `--non-interactive` | Do not require tty in a foreground mode. Helpful when running in a container. By default `monerod` runs in a foreground and opens stdin for reading. This breaks containerization because no tty getss assigned and `monerod` process crashes. You can make it run in a background with `--detach` but this is inconvenient in a containerized environment because the canonical usage is that the container waits on the main process to exist (forking makes things more complicated).
The following options define how your node participates in Monero peer-to-peer network. This is for node-to-node communication. It does **not** affect wallet-to-node interface.
| `--p2p-bind-ip` | Network interface to bind to for p2p network protocol. Default value `0.0.0.0` binds to all network interfaces. This is typically what you want. You must change this if you want to constrain binding, for example to configure connection through TOR.
| `--p2p-bind-port` | TCP port to listen for p2p network connections. Defaults to `18080` for mainnet, `28080` for testnet, and 38080 for stagenet. You normally wouldn't change that.
| `--hide-my-port` | `monerod` will still open and listen on the p2p port. However, it will not announce itself as a peerlist candidate. Technically, it will return port `0` in a response to p2p handshake (`node_data.my_port = 0` in `get_local_node_data` function). In effect nodes you connect to won't spread your IP to other nodes. To sum up, it is not really hiding, it is more like "do not advertise".
| `--add-priority-node` | Specify list of peers to connect to and
| `--add-exclusive-node` | Specify list of peers to connect to options add-priority-node and seed-node
| `--seed-node` | Connect to a node to retrieve peer
| `--p2p-external-port` | External port for p2p network protocol (if port forwarding used with NAT). Default is `0`.
