List configured terminals with host, account, and environment.

Read-only and offline (no SSH). Use this first to learn which terminal ids exist before calling status/logs/control.

Report health of one terminal or all of them.

Queries hosts concurrently and shows, per terminal: systemd service state, broker connection (per-terminal, via socket attribution), and how long since the log was last written. CONN=up plus SERVICE=active means healthy.

Args: terminal: a terminal id, or "all" (default).

Return the tail of a terminal's newest log file.

Args: terminal: terminal id. pattern: optional case-insensitive regex to grep (e.g. "login|error"). lines: number of trailing lines to return (1-1000).

Start, stop, or restart a terminal's systemd unit.

Mutating a live terminal requires confirm=true.

Args: terminal: terminal id. action: one of "start", "stop", "restart". confirm: must be true to act on a terminal tagged env=live.

Perform a one-time headless login so a migrated terminal can auto-reconnect.

Needed when a terminal was copied to a new host: MetaTrader's saved password is machine-bound and must be re-entered once. After this succeeds the unit auto-logins on every restart. Live terminals require confirm=true.

Args: terminal: terminal id. server: broker server name, e.g. "ExampleBroker-Demo". account: login number; defaults to the terminal's configured account. password: explicit password; otherwise resolved from env/secrets file. confirm: must be true to act on a terminal tagged env=live.

Capture a screenshot of a terminal's window (PNG).

Useful to visually confirm the chart, the AutoTrading state, and the EA smiley. On shared-display hosts the target window is raised first.

Args: terminal: terminal id.

Diagnose the mt4ctl setup without mutating anything.

Checks the registry, the secrets-file permissions, and — per host — SSH reachability, required remote tools, systemd units, and data directories. Run this when a terminal is unexpectedly unknown or mt4_status looks wrong. Read-only and safe.

List the expert advisors (strategies) attached to terminals.

For a single terminal, lists every attached EA; for "all", shows the count per terminal. Read-only (parses the terminal's chart files).

Args: terminal: a terminal id, or "all" (default).

Report whether algo-trading is enabled — terminal master switch + per-EA.

Shows the terminal-level AutoTrading button (from terminal.ini) and how many attached experts have live-trading enabled. Flags terminals whose master is off (nothing trades) or whose experts have non-uniform/disabled flags.

Note: the per-EA live-trading flag is a best-effort decode of the MT4 chart-expert bitmask; the terminal master switch is authoritative.

Args: terminal: a terminal id, or "all" (default).

Report each terminal's build, broker server, and last broker ping.

Read-only (parsed from the terminal's log). Useful to confirm what build and broker a terminal is on and its connection latency.

Args: terminal: a terminal id, or "all" (default).

Deploy a strategy bundle to a terminal — idempotent, managed-subset.

Pushes pre-built charts + experts so the terminal's managed files match the bundle, while leaving foreign files (e.g. a watchdog's chart) untouched. This is apply-only: it does NOT select strategies, set lots/magic, generate charts, or compile — the caller owns the bundle's contents.

bundle is a LOCAL directory on this machine (read here and pushed over SSH — NOT a path on the remote host). It mirrors the MT4 layout:

<bundle>/
  profiles/default/<name>.chr        # ready charts (one expert each)
  MQL4/Experts/<folder>/<ea>.ex4     # the experts those charts reference

Always run with dry_run=true first to preview the add/update/remove/foreign plan. Re-running the same bundle is a no-op (reports "no changes"). A terminal tagged env=live requires confirm=true. There is no rollback command: to recover, re-deploy the previous bundle (a pre-apply backup is also retained and is restored automatically if an apply fails).

reset_market_watch deletes symbols.sel in the stopped window (backed up first) so MT4 rebuilds Market Watch on the deploy's own start — caps unbounded symbol carry-over; it forces a stop/start cycle even with no file changes. After the restart, verify polls up to verify_timeout seconds rather than taking a single snapshot, so normal reconnect timing is not reported as a failed deploy.

Args: terminal: terminal id. bundle: local bundle directory path. dry_run: preview the plan without changing anything (no lock, no upload). confirm: must be true to deploy to a terminal tagged env=live. reset_market_watch: rebuild Market Watch by deleting symbols.sel while stopped. verify_timeout: seconds to poll post-restart health before reporting (default ~120).

Take an already-running terminal under mt4ctl management (first cutover).

On a terminal whose strategies were NOT placed by mt4ctl, the first mt4_deploy refuses (every existing file is an unmanaged-overwrite). Run mt4_adopt once first: it records the bundle's footprint into the manifest at the files' current on-disk hashes, so deploy can reconcile from there.

This is RECORDS-ONLY: it changes NOTHING — no upload, no restart, no preview. It is bundle-scoped (foreign files like a watchdog's chart stay foreign) and requires every bundle file to already be present on the host (the premise is the farm runs this bundle; a missing file is refused). A live terminal needs confirm=true.

bundle is a LOCAL directory (the same layout mt4_deploy takes). After adopt, run mt4_deploy <terminal> <bundle> --dry-run to confirm a clean "no changes".

Args: terminal: terminal id. bundle: local bundle directory path. confirm: must be true to adopt a terminal tagged env=live.

Poll a terminal until it is healthy (service active + broker connected) or times out.

Use after any restart to wait out the broker reconnect instead of guessing: instead of one snapshot it polls and reports the terminal's state at timeout, so a real failure is distinguishable from normal startup timing. Read-only.

Args: terminal: terminal id. timeout: seconds to poll before reporting (default ~120).