:set-file-timezone no longer works?

[chconnor]

In version 0.13.2 I could invoke lnav this way to get UTC log times translated into my local time zone:

TZ="America/Los_Angeles" lnav -c ":set-file-timezone UTC" /var/log/mylogfile

This worked in version 0.13.2. But as of version 0.14.0 and also in 0.14.1 it doesn't work and I get this error on startup:

✘ error: cannot find line
 --> command-option:1
 | :set-file-timezone UTC
 = help: :set-file-timezone zone [pattern]

...and the log lines are shown in UTC.

Am I missing something? Seems like a bug?

Thanks! lnav is the best.

[tstack]

I can replicate this, sorry for the trouble. I had made some changes to the initialization phases and missed checking for this case. The initial commands are run after indexing, but before the session is restored. The :set-file-timezone command is expecting there to be a line selected in the LOG view, but that isn't the case since the session wasn't restored. It really shouldn't expect a selection (not to mention the error message is terrible).

To work around for now, I think you can pass :goto -1 before :set-file-timezone to select a line and then the command will have something to look at.

Thanks for the report, I'll get it fixed for the v0.15.0 release that I am getting ready.

[chconnor]

Awesome, thanks for the attention to it!

Using :goto -1 makes the error go away, but the time zone isn't translated. Command is like:

TZ="America/Los_Angeles" ./lnav -c ":goto -1" -c ":set-file-timezone UTC" /path/to/logfile

[tstack]

Can you attach a sample of the log so that I can test

[chconnor]

Sure... it seems to have something to do with the first line of the file... in the first example it works as expected:

[2026-09-28 00:04:08] NOTICE[616986][C-0000940a]  Sample log line
[2026-09-28 00:04:37] NOTICE[616986][C-0000940a]  Sample log line
[2026-09-28 00:05:26] NOTICE[617031][C-0000940b]  Sample log line

In this second example it does not work:

[2026-09-26 22:31:23] Asterisk 22.9.0 built by root @ myserver on a aarch64 running Linux on 2026-05-04 22:38:06 UTC
[2026-09-28 00:04:08] NOTICE[616986][C-0000940a]  Sample log line
[2026-09-28 00:04:37] NOTICE[616986][C-0000940a]  Sample log line
[2026-09-28 00:05:26] NOTICE[617031][C-0000940b]  Sample log line

Command is like:

TZ="America/Los_Angeles" ./lnav -c ":goto -1" -c ":set-file-timezone UTC" ./sample.log

Both of those example logs work as expected in 0.13.2.

[tstack]

Using :goto -1 makes the error go away, but the time zone isn't translated.

It looks like lnav isn't recognizing all the lines in the log file. You can press p to have lnav display the results of parsing the line. Under v0.13.2, all of the lines seem to be recognized. But, under v0.14.1, lnav is only picking up the first line and not the others. lnav is only going to apply the translation to what it recognizes as a log message.

Anyways, since these logs seem to come from Asterisk, I've added an asterisk_log format to try and make sure these types of logs are recognized and parsed properly.

For the original issue, I've changed the behavior of :set-file-timezone to apply the timezone to any file with timestamps that do not include a zone. So, there no longer needs to be a focused line.

If you have some time to try out the change, the following workflow run should have binaries attached (when it finishes):

https://github.com/tstack/lnav/actions/runs/36432005438