Keyboard-driven Terminal UI for Ceph, inspired by k9s.
Note
Siphon was previously named Argonaut — renamed to avoid confusion with Ceph's own Argonaut release.
Stop memorizing long ceph commands. Browse your cluster, inspect resources, and
perform common operational tasks through a fast, intuitive terminal interface.
Siphon replaces repetitive Ceph CLI workflows with an interactive terminal interface while staying transparent: every action shows the underlying Ceph operation, and destructive changes always require confirmation.
Ceph ships an excellent CLI — but many operational workflows mean long command sequences, remembering exact flags, or juggling several terminal windows.
Siphon gives you:
- Fast keyboard navigation across every resource
- Safe destructive actions — always confirmed, never a surprise
- Real-time cluster visibility — health, capacity, IO and recovery at a glance
- Transparent execution — every action previews the exact
cephcommand it runs
- Dashboard — health (with a scrollable
ceph health detail), capacity (cluster-wide plus the fullest pools), client IO and recovery, refreshed live. - OSDs — mark in/out, reweight, destroy/purge/remove, metadata and utilisation; sort by id, reweight, %use, pgs or size.
- Pools — create, edit (size/min_size/PG/autoscale/rule), delete; browse and
sort by
pg_num,%used, stored or objects, with per-pool usage shown. - CRUSH — interactive hierarchy tree; move buckets, view rules.
- Cluster flags — view/toggle with descriptions, rationale and risks.
- Services — cephadm services and daemons; restart, start, stop. On
non-cephadm clusters (Rook, manual) it detects this and shows a read-only
daemon inventory (
ceph node ls) instead of failing. - Placement groups — cluster-wide listing, live filter, sort by objects, scrub / deep-scrub / repair.
- Consistent UX —
/filters any table,:command prompt, andy/nconfirmations that always preview the equivalentcephcommand.
Siphon manages a real cluster through librados (via go-ceph + cgo), so it runs on Linux. See Requirements for the full support matrix.
Prebuilt linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 binaries are attached to each GitHub Release. Install the Ceph client runtime libraries first:
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install -y librados2 librbd1
# RHEL/Rocky/Alma/Fedora
sudo dnf install -y librados2 librbd1Then download, verify and install the binary (replace v0.6.0 with the latest
release; ARCH picks amd64 or arm64):
VERSION=v0.6.0
ARCH=amd64 # or arm64
BASE="https://github.com/cinpol/siphon/releases/download/$VERSION"
curl -LO "$BASE/siphon_${VERSION#v}_linux_${ARCH}.tar.gz"
curl -LO "$BASE/checksums.txt"
# Verify the download
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt
# Extract and install
tar xzf "siphon_${VERSION#v}_linux_${ARCH}.tar.gz"
sudo install -m 0755 siphon /usr/local/bin/siphon
siphon --version
sudo siphon # --client autoOther package channels (Homebrew, deb/rpm) are planned for later releases — until then, other platforms build from source.
Install the build packages (see Requirements), then:
git clone https://github.com/cinpol/siphon.git
cd siphon
make build
sudo ./bin/siphon # --client autosudo (or another user that can read the admin keyring) lets librados
authenticate the way the ceph CLI does.
A prebuilt, multi-arch image (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64, with the Ceph
client libraries bundled) is on Docker Hub:
docker run --rm -it -v /etc/ceph:/etc/ceph:ro docker.io/cinpol/siphonDocker pulls the right architecture automatically, so on an Apple Silicon Mac the image runs natively (no emulation). Works against any cluster the container can reach. See docs/docker.md, and for Kubernetes docs/kubernetes.md (any cluster) or docs/rook.md (Rook-Ceph).
Build the pure-Go binary that talks only to an in-memory mock — works on any OS, no Ceph required:
make build-mock
./bin/siphon-mock --client mock| Platform | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Linux amd64 |
✅ | Prebuilt binaries; the primary tested target. |
Linux arm64 |
✅ | Prebuilt binaries; the container image is multi-arch too. |
| macOS / Windows | ❌ | librados is not available natively; only the mock client runs, for development/demos. On Apple Silicon the multi-arch container image runs natively — use it to reach a real cluster. |
Siphon targets the currently maintained Ceph releases:
| Release | Major |
|---|---|
| Reef | 18 |
| Squid | 19 |
| Tentacle | 20 |
Build-tested in CI against Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04, Debian 12 / 13 and AlmaLinux 9 (which also covers binary-compatible RHEL / Rocky 9). Any distribution shipping a supported Ceph client release should work; the constraint is the Ceph client version, not the distro itself.
To run a prebuilt binary you need the Ceph client shared libraries; to
build from source you also need the development headers, a C compiler and
pkg-config:
| Distro family | Runtime | Build |
|---|---|---|
| Debian / Ubuntu | librados2 librbd1 |
librados-dev librbd-dev gcc pkg-config |
| RHEL / Rocky / Alma / Fedora | librados2 librbd1 |
librados-devel librbd-devel gcc pkgconf-pkg-config |
Building from source also needs Go 1.26+.
Siphon authenticates exactly like the ceph CLI: it needs a reachable cluster
with a valid ceph.conf and a client keyring. If ceph -s works from
the host (as the user running Siphon), Siphon will connect too.
siphon [flags]| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
--client |
auto |
auto | mock | goceph |
--ceph-conf |
(librados default) | Path to ceph.conf, overriding app config |
--version |
Print version information and exit |
--client auto uses the native go-ceph transport and errors with guidance if
librados is unavailable — it never silently shows mock data. Use --client mock
to explicitly run against the built-in demo cluster.
1–7— switch views;:— command prompt (e.g.:osd)/— filter the current table live⇧+column — sort a table by that column; press again to reverse. Pools:⇧N/P/U/S/O(name/pg_num/%used/stored/objects); OSDs:⇧I/R/U/P/S(id/reweight/%use/pgs/size); PGs:⇧O(objects)Enter— details for the selected item; on the Dashboard it opens a scrollableceph health detail. Context actions use the shortcut keys shown in the header- Inside the Health-detail overlay:
↑/↓,PgUp/PgDn,g/Gscroll;Esccloses q— quit
Optional, loaded from ~/.config/siphon/config.yaml (honours
XDG_CONFIG_HOME). Built-in defaults are used when absent.
ceph:
config_path: "" # empty = librados default search path
user: client.admin
ui:
refresh_seconds: 5
dashboard_pool_rows: 5 # pools shown on the dashboard (fullest first); rest → Pools view
# pg_problem_flags: # PG state flags the "problems only" (u) filter treats as problems.
# - inconsistent # Omit the whole key to use these built-in defaults; setting it
# - snaptrim_error # replaces the list entirely.
# - failed_repair
# - unfound
# - staleStrict separation of concerns; the dependency direction always points inward:
cmd/siphon entrypoint: wiring only
│
▼
internal/ui Bubble Tea app (Model/Update/View), views, styles
│
▼
internal/service business logic & safety/confirmation workflows
│
▼
internal/ceph Client interface — the ONLY seam to Ceph
├── goceph native librados transport (build tag: goceph)
├── mock in-memory client for dev/tests (no cluster needed)
└── decode version-aware parsing of Ceph admin-command JSON
internal/model transport-agnostic domain types
internal/version Ceph release matrix + build info
internal/config app config (XDG YAML)
Only implementations under internal/ceph import a concrete transport
(go-ceph). Everything else depends on the ceph.Client interface, which keeps
the app testable against the mock and free of any single transport.
Siphon is under active development. Implemented so far:
- ✅ Dashboard
- ✅ OSDs
- ✅ Pools
- ✅ CRUSH
- ✅ Cluster flags
- ✅ Services
- ✅ Placement groups
More resources and workflows are on the way, with partial-failure resilience and stale-data handling throughout.
make test # unit + end-to-end (mock) tests
make vet
make fmtThe native go-ceph transport (internal/ceph/goceph) is gated behind the
goceph build tag because it requires cgo and librados. The default (untagged)
build uses the in-memory mock, so development and CI need no cluster or C
libraries.
Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Siphon is inspired by the excellent work behind k9s, bringing a similar keyboard-driven operational experience to Ceph clusters. It is built on Bubble Tea and go-ceph.
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE for
attribution and third-party components. Siphon links the Ceph client libraries
(librados/librbd, LGPL-2.1) dynamically when built with the goceph tag.