Exploring the hzn command

On Horizon edge nodes, use the hzn command to inspect many aspects of the state of the local system and of the larger IBM Edge Computing Manager for Devices ecosystem outside your edge node. The hzn command also lets you interact with the system and change the state of resources you own.

You can get help for the hzn command, including more details about any of the subcommands by using the --help (or -h) flag at any subcommand level. For example, try the following commands:

hzn --help
hzn node --help
hzn exchange pattern --help

You can use the --verbose (or -v) flag in the hzn command to provide more detailed output. Most often hzn commands are convenience wrappers over the REST APIs that are provided by Horizon components, and the --verbose flag typically shows the details of the REST interactions behind the scenes. For example, try the following command:

hzn node list -v

The output of that command shows the two REST GET method invocations on localhost URLs where the local Horizon agent responds to REST requests.