First capture

After installation, start the collector:

nginx-inspector serve --db ./data/events.sqlite3 --control-file ./control/control

The nginx inspector_control directive must point to that same control file. In another terminal:

nginx-inspector status
nginx-inspector start --for 10m

The default is 1% sampling. For a short deliberate full trace, use nginx-inspector start --sample 100 --for 30s.

Send traffic through your existing nginx listener. Open http://127.0.0.1:19877/, select a request, and press Inspect. Start with the routing card and hook sequence; then inspect upstream attempts, policies and buffers.

nginx-inspector stop
nginx-inspector top --once

Stop leaves the viewer and history available. Capture also stops automatically when the time window expires. An in-flight request is only retained if its log hook runs while the capture gate remains active.

For a remote collector, tunnel its loopback interface:

ssh -N -L 19877:127.0.0.1:19877 your-nginx-host
nginx-inspector start --for 1h --url http://127.0.0.1:19877