Manpages

NAME

lynx - a general purpose distributed information browser for the World Wide Web

SYNOPSIS

lynx [options] [optional paths or URLs]

lynx [options] [path or URL] -get_data
data
--

lynx [options] [path or URL] -post_data
data
--

Use “lynx -help” to display a complete list of current options.

DESCRIPTION

Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100 terminals, vt100 emulators running on Windows 95/NT/XP/7/8 or any POSIX platform, or any other “curses-oriented” display). It will display hypertext markup language (HTML) documents containing links to files residing on the local system, as well as files residing on remote systems running Gopher, HTTP, FTP, WAIS, and NNTP servers. Current versions of Lynx run on Unix, VMS, Windows 95/NT/XP/7/8, DOS DJGPP and OS/2.

Lynx can be used to access information on the World Wide Web, or to build information systems intended primarily for local access. For example, Lynx has been used to build several Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS). In addition, Lynx can be used to build systems isolated within a single LAN.

OPTIONS

At start up, Lynx will load any local file or remote URL specified at the command line. For help with URLs, press “?” or “H” while running Lynx. Then follow the link titled, “Help on URLs.”

If more than one local file or remote URL is listed on the command line, Lynx will open only the last interactively. All of the names (local files and remote URLs) are added to the G)oto history.

Lynx uses only long option names. Option names can begin with double dash “--” as well, underscores and dashes can be intermixed in option names (in the reference below, options are shown with one dash “-” before them, and with underscores “_”).

Lynx provides many command-line options. Some options require a value (string, number or keyword). These are noted in the reference below. The other options set boolean values in the program. There are three types of boolean options: set, unset and toggle. If no option value is given, these have the obvious meaning: set (to true), unset (to false), or toggle (between true/false). For any of these, an explicit value can be given in different forms to allow for operating system constraints, e.g.,

-center:off
-center=off
-center-

Lynx recognizes “1”, “+”, “on” and “true” for true values, and “0”, “-”, “off” and “false” for false values. Other option-values are ignored.

The default boolean, number and string option values that are compiled into Lynx are displayed in the help-message provided by lynx -help. Some of those may differ according to how Lynx was built; see the help message itself for these values. The -help option is processed in the third pass of options-processing, so any option which sets a value, as well as runtime configuration values are reflected in the help-message.

-accept_all_cookies

accept all cookies.

-anonymous

apply restrictions for anonymous account, see also -restrictions.

-assume_charset=MIMEname

charset for documents that do not specify it.

-assume_local_charset=MIMEname

charset assumed for local files, i.e., files which Lynx creates such as internal pages for the options menu.

-assume_unrec_charset=MIMEname

use this instead of unrecognized charsets.

-auth=ID:PASSWD

set authorization ID and password for protected documents at startup. Be sure to protect any script files which use this switch.

-bibhost=URL

specify a local bibp server (default http://bibhost/).

-buried_news

toggles scanning of news articles for buried references, and converts them to news links. Not recommended because email addresses enclosed in angle brackets will be converted to false news links, and uuencoded messages can be trashed.

-cache=NUMBER

set the NUMBER of documents cached in memory. The default is 10.

-center

Toggle center alignment in HTML TABLE.

-cfg=FILENAME

specifies a Lynx configuration file other than the default lynx.cfg.

-child_relaxed

exit on left-arrow in startfile, but allow save to disk and associated print/mail options.

-cmd_log=FILENAME

write keystroke commands and related information to the specified file.

-cmd_script=FILENAME

read keystroke commands from the specified file. You can use the data written using the -cmd_log option. Lynx will ignore other information which the command-logging may have written to the logfile. Each line of the command script contains either a comment beginning with “#”, or a keyword:
exit

causes the script to stop, and forces Lynx to exit immediately.

key

the character value, in printable form. Cursor and other special keys are given as names, e.g., “Down Arrow”. Printable 7-bit ASCII codes are given as-is, and hexadecimal values represent other 8-bit codes.

set

followed by a “name=value” allows one to override values set in the lynx.cfg or .lynxrc files. Lynx tries the cfg-file setting first.

-collapse_br_tags

toggles collapsing of BR tags.

-connect_timeout=N

Sets the connection timeout, where N is given in seconds.

-cookie_file=FILENAME

specifies a file to use to read cookies. If none is specified, the default value is ~/.lynx_cookies for most systems, but ~/cookies for MS-DOS.

-cookie_save_file=FILENAME

specifies a file to use to store cookies. If none is specified, the value given by -cookie_file is used.

-cookies

toggles handling of Set-Cookie headers.

-curses_pads

toggles the use of curses “pad” feature which supports left/right scrolling of the display. The feature is normally available for curses configurations, but inactive. To activate it, use the “|” character or the LINEWRAP_TOGGLE command. Toggling this option makes the feature altogether unavailable.

-debug_partial

separate incremental display stages with MessageSecs delay

-default_colors

toggles the default-colors feature which is normally set in the lynx.cfg file.

-display=DISPLAY

set the display variable for X rexec-ed programs.

-display_charset=MIMEname

set the charset for the terminal output.

-dont_wrap_pre

inhibit wrapping of text when -dump’ing and -crawl’ing, mark wrapped lines of <pre> in interactive session.

lynx -dump http://www.subir.com/lynx.html

Files specified on the command line are formatted as HTML if their names end with one of the standard web suffixes such as “.htm” or “.html”. Use the -force_html option to format files whose names do not follow this convention.

-editor=EDITOR

enable external editing, using the specified EDITOR. (vi, ed, emacs, etc.)

-emacskeys

enable emacs-like key movement.

-enable_scrollback

toggles compatibility with communication programs’ scrollback keys (may be incompatible with some curses packages).

-error_file=FILE

define a file where Lynx will report HTTP access codes.

-fileversions

include all versions of files in local VMS directory listings.

-find_leaks

toggle memory leak-checking. Normally this is not compiled-into your executable, but when it is, it can be disabled for a session.

-force_empty_hrefless_a

force HREF-less “A” elements to be empty (close them as soon as they are seen).

-force_html

forces the first document to be interpreted as HTML.

This is most useful when processing files specified on the command line which have an unrecognized suffix (or the suffix is associated with a non-HTML type, such as “.txt” for plain text files).

Lynx recognizes these file suffixes as HTML:

“.ht3”,
“.htm”,
“.html3”,
“.html”,
“.htmlx”,
“.php3”,
“.php”,
“.phtml”,
“.sht”, and
“.shtml”.

-force_secure

toggles forcing of the secure flag for SSL cookies.

-forms_options

toggles whether the Options Menu is key-based or form-based.

-get_data

properly formatted data for a get form are read in from the standard input and passed to the form. Input is terminated by a line that starts with “---”.

Lynx issues an HTTP GET, sending the form to the path or URL given on the command-line and prints the response of the server. If no path or URL is given, Lynx sends the form to the start-page.

-hiddenlinks=[option]

control the display of hidden links.
merge

hidden links show up as bracketed numbers and are numbered together with other links in the sequence of their occurrence in the document.

listonly

hidden links are shown only on L)ist screens and listings generated by -dump or from the P)rint menu, but appear separately at the end of those lists. This is the default behavior.

ignore

hidden links do not appear even in listings.

-historical

toggles use of “>” or “-->” as a terminator for comments.

-homepage=URL

set homepage separate from start page.

-image_links

toggles inclusion of links for all images.

-index=URL

set the default index file to the specified URL.

-justify

do justification of text.

-link=NUMBER

starting count for lnk#.dat files produced by -crawl.

-list_decoded

for -dump, show URL-encoded links decoded.

-list_inline

for -dump, show the links inline with the text.

-listonly

for -dump, show only the list of links.

-localhost

disable URLs that point to remote hosts.

-locexec

enable local program execution from local files only (if Lynx was compiled with local execution enabled).

-lss=FILENAME

specify filename containing color-style information. The default is lynx.lss. If you give an empty filename, Lynx uses a built-in monochrome scheme which imitates the non-color-style configuration.

-mime_header

prints the MIME header of a fetched document along with its source.

-minimal

toggles minimal versus valid comment parsing.

-nested_tables

toggles nested-tables logic (for debugging).

-newschunksize=NUMBER

number of articles in chunked news listings.

-newsmaxchunk=NUMBER

maximum news articles in listings before chunking.

-nobold

disable bold video-attribute.

-nobrowse

disable directory browsing.

-nocolor

force color mode off, overriding terminal capabilities and any -color flags, COLORTERM variable, and saved .lynxrc settings.

-noexec

disable local program execution. (DEFAULT)

-nofilereferer

disable transmissions of Referer headers for file URLs.

-nolist

disable the link list feature in dumps.

-nomargins

disable left/right margins in the default style sheet.

-nomore

disable -more- string in statusline messages.

-nonrestarting_sigwinch

This flag is not available on all systems, Lynx needs to be compiled with HAVE_SIGACTION defined. If available, this flag may cause Lynx to react more immediately to window changes when run within an xterm.

-nonumbers

disable link- and field-numbering. This overrides -number_fields and -number_links.

-nopause

disable forced pauses for statusline messages.

-noprint

disable most print functions.

-noredir

prevents automatic redirection and prints a message with a link to the new URL.

-noreferer

disable transmissions of Referer headers.

-noreverse

disable reverse video-attribute.

-nosocks

disable SOCKS proxy usage by a SOCKSified Lynx.

-nostatus

disable the retrieval status messages.

-notitle

disable title and blank line from top of page.

-nounderline

disable underline video-attribute.

-number_fields

force numbering of links as well as form input fields

-number_links

force numbering of links.

-partial

toggles display partial pages while loading.

-partial_thres=NUMBER

number of lines to render before repainting display with partial-display logic

-passive_ftp

toggles passive ftp connections.

-pauth=ID:PASSWD

set authorization ID and password for a protected proxy server at startup. Be sure to protect any script files which use this switch.

-post_data

properly formatted data for a post form are read in from the standard input and passed to the form. Input is terminated by a line that starts with “---”.

Lynx issues an HTTP POST, sending the form to the path or URL given on the command-line and prints the response of the server. If no path or URL is given, Lynx sends the form to the start-page.

-preparsed

show HTML source preparsed and reformatted when used with -source or in source view.

-prettysrc

show HTML source view with lexical elements and tags in color.

-pseudo_inlines

toggles pseudo-ALTs for inline images with no ALT string.

-read_timeout=N

Sets the read-timeout, where N is given in seconds.

-reload

flushes the cache on a proxy server (only the first document given on the command-line is affected).

-restrictions=[option][,option][,option]...

allows a list of services to be disabled selectively. Dashes and underscores in option names can be intermixed. The following list is printed if no options are specified.
all

restricts all options listed below.

bookmark

disallow changing the location of the bookmark file.

bookmark_exec

disallow execution links via the bookmark file.

change_exec_perms

disallow changing the eXecute permission on files (but still allow it for directories) when local file management is enabled.

default

same as command line option -anonymous. Disables default services for anonymous users. Set to all restricted, except for: inside_telnet, outside_telnet, inside_ftp, outside_ftp, inside_rlogin, outside_rlogin, inside_news, outside_news, telnet_port, jump, mail, print, exec, and goto. The settings for these, as well as additional goto restrictions for specific URL schemes that are also applied, are derived from definitions within userdefs.h.

dired_support

disallow local file management.

disk_save

disallow saving to disk in the download and print menus.

dotfiles

disallow access to, or creation of, hidden (dot) files.

download

disallow some downloaders in the download menu (does not imply disk_save restriction).

editor

disallow external editing.

exec

disable execution scripts.

exec_frozen

disallow the user from changing the local execution option.

externals

disallow some “EXTERNAL” configuration lines if support for passing URLs to external applications (with the EXTERN command) is compiled in.

file_url

disallow using G)oto, served links or bookmarks for file: URLs.

goto

disable the “g” (goto) command.

inside_ftp

disallow ftps for people coming from inside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

inside_news

disallow USENET news posting for people coming from inside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

inside_rlogin

disallow rlogins for people coming from inside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

inside_telnet

disallow telnets for people coming from inside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

jump

disable the “j” (jump) command.

multibook

disallow multiple bookmarks.

mail

disallow mail.

news_post

disallow USENET News posting.

options_save

disallow saving options in .lynxrc.

outside_ftp

disallow ftps for people coming from outside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

outside_news

disallow USENET news reading and posting for people coming from outside your domain (utmp required for selectivity). This restriction applies to “news”, “nntp”, “newspost”, and “newsreply” URLs, but not to “snews”, “snewspost”, or “snewsreply” in case they are supported.

outside_rlogin

disallow rlogins for people coming from outside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

outside_telnet

disallow telnets for people coming from outside your domain (utmp required for selectivity).

print

disallow most print options.

shell

disallow shell escapes and lynxexec or lynxprog G)oto’s.

suspend

disallow Unix Control-Z suspends with escape to shell.

telnet_port

disallow specifying a port in telnet G)oto’s.

useragent

disallow modifications of the User-Agent header.

-resubmit_posts

toggles forced resubmissions (no-cache) of forms with method POST when the documents they returned are sought with the PREV_DOC command or from the History List.

-rlogin

disable recognition of rlogin commands.

-scrollbar

toggles showing scrollbar.

-scrollbar_arrow

toggles showing arrows at ends of the scrollbar.

-selective

require .www_browsable files to browse directories.

-session=FILENAME

resumes from specified file on startup and saves session to that file on exit.

-sessionin=FILENAME

resumes session from specified file.

-sessionout=FILENAME

saves session to specified file.

-short_url

show very long URLs in the status line with “...” to represent the portion which cannot be displayed. The beginning and end of the URL are displayed, rather than suppressing the end.

-show_cfg

Print the configuration settings, e.g., as read from “lynx.cfg”, and exit.

-show_cursor

If enabled the cursor will not be hidden in the right hand corner but will instead be positioned at the start of the currently selected link. Show cursor is the default for systems without FANCY_CURSES capabilities. The default configuration can be changed in userdefs.h or lynx.cfg. The command line switch toggles the default.

-show_rate

If enabled the transfer rate is shown in bytes/second. If disabled, no transfer rate is shown. Use lynx.cfg or the options menu to select KB/second and/or ETA.

-socks5_proxy=URL

(Via which) SOCKS5 proxy to connect: any network traffic, including all DNS resolutions but the one for URL itself, will be redirected through the SOCKS5 proxy. URL may be given as “proxy.example.com”, “proxy.example.com:1080”, “192.168.0.1”, or “192.168.0.1:1080” (and IPv6 notation if so supported). A SOCKS5 proxy may also be specified via the environment variable SOCKS5_PROXY. This option controls the builtin SOCKS5 support, which is unrelated to the option -nosocks.

-soft_dquotes

toggles emulation of the old Netscape and Mosaic bug which treated “>” as a co-terminator for double-quotes and tags.

-source

works the same as dump but outputs HTML source instead of formatted text. For example

lynx -source . >foo.html

generates HTML source listing the files in the current directory. Each file is marked by an HREF relative to the parent directory. Add a trailing slash to make the HREF’s relative to the current directory:

lynx -source ./ >foo.html

-stack_dump

disable SIGINT cleanup handler

-startfile_ok

allow non-http startfile and homepage with -validate.

-stderr

When dumping a document using -dump or -source, Lynx normally does not display alert (error) messages that you see on the screen in the status line. Use the -stderr option to tell Lynx to write these messages to the standard error.

-syslog=text

information for syslog call.

-syslog_urls

log requested URLs with syslog.

-tagsoup

initialize parser, using Tag Soup DTD rather than SortaSGML.

-telnet

disable recognition of telnet commands.

-term=TERM

tell Lynx what terminal type to assume it is talking to. (This may be useful for remote execution, when, for example, Lynx connects to a remote TCP/IP port that starts a script that, in turn, starts another Lynx process.)

-timeout=N

For win32, sets the network read-timeout, where N is given in seconds.

-trace_mask=value

turn on optional traces, which may result in very large trace files. Logically OR the values to combine options:

128

GridText parsing

256

timing

512

detailed URL parsing

-traversal

traverse all http links derived from startfile. When used with -crawl, each link that begins with the same string as startfile is output to a file, intended for indexing.

See CRAWL.announce for more information.

-trim_blank_lines

toggles trimming of trailing blank lines as well as the related trimming of blank lines while collapsing BR tags.

-trim_input_fields

trim input text/textarea fields in forms.

-underline_links

toggles use of underline/bold attribute for links.

-underscore

toggles use of _underline_ format in dumps.

-unique_urls

check for duplicate link numbers in each page and corresponding lists, and reuse the original link number.

-update_term_title

enables updating the title in terminal emulators. Use only if your terminal emulator supports that escape code. Has no effect when used with -notitle.

-use_mouse

turn on mouse support, if available. Clicking the left mouse button on a link traverses it. Clicking the right mouse button pops back. Click on the top line to scroll up. Click on the bottom line to scroll down. The first few positions in the top and bottom line may invoke additional functions. Lynx must be compiled with ncurses or slang to support this feature. If ncurses is used, clicking the middle mouse button pops up a simple menu. Mouse clicks may only work reliably while Lynx is idle waiting for input.

-useragent=Name

set alternate Lynx User-Agent header.

-validate

accept only http URLs (for validation). Complete security restrictions also are implemented.

-verbose

toggle [LINK], [IMAGE] and [INLINE] comments with filenames of these images.

-version

print version information, and exit.

-vikeys

enable vi-like key movement.

-wdebug

enable Waterloo tcp/ip packet debug (print to watt debugfile). This applies only to DOS versions compiled with WATTCP or WATT-32.

-width=NUMBER

number of columns for formatting of dumps, default is 80. This is limited by the number of columns that Lynx could display, typically 1024 (the MAX_LINE symbol).

-with_backspaces

emit backspaces in output if -dump’ing or -crawl’ing (like man does)

-xhtml_parsing

tells Lynx that it can ignore certain tags which have no content in an XHTML 1.0 document. For example “<p/>” will be discarded.

COMMANDS

More than one key can be mapped to a given command. Here are some of the most useful:

If the same command is mapped to the same letter differing only by upper/lowercase only the lowercase mapping is shown.

ENVIRONMENT

In addition to various “standard” environment variables such as HOME, PATH, USER, DISPLAY, TMPDIR, etc, Lynx utilizes several Lynx-specific environment variables, if they exist.

Others may be created or modified by Lynx to pass data to an external program, or for other reasons. These are listed separately below.

See also the sections on SIMULATED CGI SUPPORT and NATIVE LANGUAGE SUPPORT, below.

Note: Not all environment variables apply to all types of platforms supported by Lynx, though most do. Feedback on platform dependencies is solicited.

Environment Variables Used By Lynx:

See the userdefs.h file for more information.

See the lynx.cfg file for more information.

Each protocol used by Lynx, (http, ftp, gopher, etc), can be mapped separately by setting environment variables of the form PROTOCOL_proxy. Protocols are indicated in a URI by the name before “:”, e.g., “http” in “http://some.server.dom:port/” for HTML.

Depending on your system configuration and supported protocols, the environment variables recognized by lynx may include

cso_proxy
finger_proxy
ftp_proxy
gopher_proxy
https_proxy
http_proxy
newspost_proxy
newsreply_proxy
news_proxy
nntp_proxy
no_proxy
snewspost_proxy
snewsreply_proxy
snews_proxy
wais_proxy

See Lynx Users Guide for additional details and examples.

See Lynx Users Guide for details.

Environment Variables Set or Modified By Lynx:

See also the comments in the distribution’s sample mailcap file, for notes on usage in such a file.

SIMULATED CGI SUPPORT

If built with the cgi-links option enabled, Lynx allows access to a cgi script directly without the need for an http daemon.

When executing such “lynxcgi scripts” (if enabled), the following variables may be set for simulating a CGI environment:

CONTENT_LENGTH

CONTENT_TYPE

DOCUMENT_ROOT

HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET

HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE

HTTP_USER_AGENT

PATH_INFO

PATH_TRANSLATED

QUERY_STRING

REMOTE_ADDR

REMOTE_HOST

REQUEST_METHOD

SERVER_SOFTWARE

Other environment variables are not inherited by the script, unless they are provided via a LYNXCGI_ENVIRONMENT statement in the configuration file. See the lynx.cfg file, and the (draft) CGI 1.1 Specification <http://Web.Golux.Com/coar/cgi/draft-coar-cgi-v11-00.txt>; for the definition and usage of these variables.

The CGI Specification, and other associated documentation, should be consulted for general information on CGI script programming.

NATIVE LANGUAGE SUPPORT

If configured and installed with Native Language Support, Lynx will display status and other messages in your local language. See the file ABOUT_NLS in the source distribution, or at your local GNU site, for more information about internationalization.

The following environment variables may be used to alter default settings:

NOTES

This is the manual for Lynx v2.9.0dev.5; development is in progress for 2.9.0.

If you wish to contribute to the further development of Lynx, subscribe to our mailing list. Send email to <lynx-dev-request [AT] nongnu.org> with “subscribe lynx-dev” as the only line in the body of your message.

Send bug reports, comments, suggestions to <lynx-dev [AT] nongnu.org> after subscribing.

Unsubscribe by sending email to <lynx-dev-request [AT] nongnu.org> with “unsubscribe lynx-dev” as the only line in the body of your message. Do not send the unsubscribe message to the lynx-dev list, itself.

SEE ALSO

catgets(3), curses(3), environ(7), execve(2), ftp(1), gettext(GNU), localeconv(3), ncurses(3), setlocale(3), slang(?), termcap(5), terminfo(5), wget(GNU)

Note that man page availability and section numbering is somewhat platform dependent, and may vary from the above references.

A section shown as (GNU), is intended to denote that the topic may be available via an info page, instead of a man page (i.e., try “info subject”, rather than “man subject”).

A section shown as (?) denotes that documentation on the topic exists, but is not part of an established documentation retrieval system (see the distribution files associated with the topic, or contact your System Administrator for further information).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lynx has incorporated code from a variety of sources along the way. The earliest versions of Lynx included code from Earl Fogel of Computing Services at the University of Saskatchewan, who implemented HYPERREZ in the Unix environment. HYPERREZ was developed by Niel Larson of Think.com and served as the model for the early versions of Lynx. Those versions also incorporated libraries from the Unix Gopher clients developed at the University of Minnesota, and the later versions of Lynx rely on the WWW client library code developed by Tim Berners-Lee and the WWW community. Also a special thanks to Foteos Macrides who ported much of Lynx to VMS and did or organized most of its development since the departures of Lou Montulli and Garrett Blythe from the University of Kansas in the summer of 1994 through the release of v2.7.2, and to everyone on the net who has contributed to Lynx’s development either directly (through patches, comments or bug reports) or indirectly (through inspiration and development of other systems).

AUTHORS

Lou Montulli, Garrett Blythe, Craig Lavender, Michael Grobe, Charles Rezac
Academic Computing Services
University of Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas 66047

Foteos Macrides
Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts 01545

Thomas E. Dickey
<dickey [AT] invisible-island.net>