rosnode command-line tool

The rosnode command-line tool displays information about ROS Nodes. The currently supported commands are:

rosnode info    print information about node
rosnode kill    kill a running node
rosnode list    list active nodes
rosnode machine list nodes running on a particular machine or list machines
rosnode ping    test connectivity to node
rosnode cleanup purge registration information of unreachable nodes

rosnode info

• info <node-name>

  • Display information about a node, including publications and subscriptions.

    $ rosnode info /node_name

rosnode kill

IMPORTANT: rosnode kill is not guaranteed to succeed. If a node is hung or set to "respawn" in roslaunch, it may either fail to die or may quickly reappear.

• kill <node-name>...

  • Kill one or more nodes by name.

    $ rosnode kill rosout add_two_ints_server

  kill

  • Interactive mode. This enables you to select which node to kill from a numbered list, which is useful for killing anonymous nodes.

    $ rosnode kill
    1. /rosout
    
    Please enter the number of the node you wish to kill.
    > 

  kill -a, kill --all

  • Kill all nodes.

rosnode list

• list

  • Display a list of current nodes.

    $ rosnode list

  list <namespace>

  • Display a list of current nodes inside /namespace.

    $ rosnode list /my_ns

  list -u

  • List XML-RPC URIs of current nodes.

    $ rosnode list -u

  list -a, list --all

  • List name and XML-RPC URIs (all info) of current nodes.

    $ rosnode list -a

rosnode machine

• machine <machine-name>

  • List nodes running on a particular machine.

    $ rosnode machine ninja.local
    /talker-ninja.local-72266-1257921234733
    /rosout
    /listener-ninja.local-72615-1257921238320

New in Fuerte

• machine

  • List all machines

rosnode ping

• ping <node-name>

  • Ping a node repeatedly.

    $ rosnode ping /node_name

  ping --all

  • Ping all nodes. This option cannot be used with -c.

    $ rosnode ping --all

    ROS 0.11: -a may also be used.

  ping -c COUNT

  • Ping a node COUNT times. This option cannot be used with --all.

    $ rosnode ping -c 4 rosout
    rosnode: node is [/rosout]
    pinging /rosout with a timeout of 3.0s
    xmlrpc reply from http://ann:46635/     time=1.195908ms
    xmlrpc reply from http://ann:46635/     time=1.123905ms
    xmlrpc reply from http://ann:46635/     time=1.144886ms
    xmlrpc reply from http://ann:46635/     time=1.137018ms
    ping average: 1.150429ms

rosnode cleanup

IMPORTANT: rosnode cleanup was meant as a temporary solution and its use was not encouraged in normal operation. Its benefit is aesthetic and it has the downside of potentially unregistering functioning nodes. Relevant discussion.

• cleanup

  • Purge the registration of any node that cannot be contacted immediately. Prints list of unreachable nodes which has to be confirmed.

    $ rosnode cleanup

Roadmap

rosnode is a stable command-line tool within the ROS core toolchain. No major feature development is currently scheduled for this tool.