loggingkuberneteskubectlkubelet

Where are Kubernetes' pods logfiles?

When I run

$ kubectl logs <container>

I get the logs of my pods.

But where are the files for those logs?

Some sources says /var/log/containers/ others says /var/lib/docker/containers/ but I couldn't find my actual application's or pod's log.

Solution

  • The on-disk filename comes from

    docker inspect $pod_name_or_sha | jq -r '.[0].LogPath'

    assuming the docker daemon's configuration is the default {"log-driver": "json-file"}, which is almost guaranteed to be true if kubectl logs behaves correctly.

    This may also go without saying, but you must be on the Node upon which the Pod was scheduled for either docker inspect, or sniffing around for the presence of log files on disk, to do anything helpful. kubectl describe pod $pod_name will render the Node name, or as you might suspect it'll be in kubectl get -o json pod $pod_name if you wish to acquire it programmatically.