c command · Installing the assistant · Using it responsiblyInstall and use the command-line assistant powered by RHEL Lightspeed to get natural-language help understanding, configuring, and troubleshooting a RHEL system — and understand its limits.
dnf install command-line-assistantcc historysystemctl status cladRHEL Lightspeed is a generative-AI service, included with a RHEL subscription, that answers natural-language questions about managing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Its responses are grounded in RHEL product documentation and the Red Hat Knowledgebase rather than generic internet text.
On the system itself, you interact with Lightspeed through the command-line assistant — a small client you invoke with the c command. Behind the scenes, a background daemon called clad (Command Line Assistant Daemon) is the only part of the system that talks to the network; it forwards your question to the Lightspeed service and prints the response back in your terminal.
subscription-manager (see Chapter 4). An unregistered system cannot install or use it.
The assistant ships as a package you install with dnf, available on registered RHEL 9 (9.6+) and RHEL 10 systems.
# Install the command-line assistant package sudo dnf install command-line-assistant # Confirm the clad daemon is running systemctl status clad
The assistant's configuration file lives at /etc/xdg/command-line-assistant/config.toml. In most classroom and standard-subscription setups you won't need to touch it — it matters mainly in enterprise environments that route through Red Hat Satellite or a custom endpoint.
# After changing config.toml, restart the daemon to apply it
sudo systemctl restart clad
man clad for details on the service itself if you ever need to troubleshoot connectivity.
The basic pattern is the c command followed by your question in quotation marks.
# Ask a general how-to question c "how do I create a network bridge with nmcli" # Ask about a specific service c "how do I check whether firewalld is running" # Ask it to explain a concept c "what is the difference between a systemd service and a target"
Because the assistant understands plain English rather than exact syntax, it's especially useful when you know roughly what you want to do but don't remember (or have never learned) the specific command.
man pages or official documentation before running it on a production system.
You can pipe the output of a command — or the contents of a log file — directly into the assistant so it can help interpret what you're looking at.
# Ask the assistant to help interpret a log file cat /var/log/messages | c # Pipe a command's output straight in systemctl status sshd | c
This turns troubleshooting into a conversation: run a command, pipe the confusing output to c, read its explanation, then ask a follow-up question to keep narrowing down the problem.
The assistant keeps a record of your past questions and answers, which you can revisit or search with c history.
# Show your entire conversation history c history --all # Show only the first conversation on record c history --first # Show only the most recent conversation c history --last # Search history for questions and answers about a topic c history --filter "podman" # Clear all stored history c history --clear
The command-line assistant sends your questions — and anything you pipe into it — to Red Hat's hosted Lightspeed service to generate a response. Treat it accordingly.
c, used to interact with RHEL Lightspeed from the terminalc and Lightspeedc "question"/etc/xdg/command-line-assistant/config.tomlclad daemon, and why does only it — not the c client directly — talk to the network?c command that would ask the assistant how to list all currently enabled systemd services.journalctl -xe into the assistant for help interpreting it?