debian-mirror-gitlab/doc/user/project/clusters/kubernetes_pod_logs.md

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Kubernetes Logs (DEPRECATED) (FREE SELF)

• Introduced in GitLab 11.0.
• Moved from GitLab Ultimate to GitLab Free 12.9.
• Deprecated in GitLab 14.5.
• Moved behind a feature flag named monitor_logging in GitLab 15.0. Disabled by default.
• Disabled on self-managed in GitLab 15.0.

WARNING: This feature is in its end-of-life process. This feature was deprecated in GitLab 14.5. It will be removed completely in GitLab 15.2.

FLAG: On self-managed GitLab, by default this feature is not available. To make it available, ask an administrator to enable the feature flag named monitor_logging and the one named certificate_based_clusters. On GitLab.com, this feature is not available. This feature is not recommended for production use.

GitLab makes it easy to view the logs of running pods in connected Kubernetes clusters. By displaying the logs directly in GitLab in the Log Explorer, developers can avoid managing console tools or jumping to a different interface. The Log Explorer interface provides a set of filters above the log file data, depending on your configuration:

• Namespace - Select the environment to display. Users with Maintainer or greater permissions can also see pods in the gitlab-managed-apps namespace.
• Search - Only available if the Elastic Stack integration is enabled.
• Select time range - Select the range of time to display. Only available if the Elastic Stack integration is enabled.
• Scroll to bottom {scroll_down} - Scroll to the end of the displayed logs.
• Refresh {retry} - Reload the displayed logs.

To learn more about the Log Explorer, see APM - Log Explorer.

Learn more about Kubernetes + GitLab. Everything you need to build, test, deploy, and run your application at scale.

Requirements

Deploying to a Kubernetes environment is required to use Logs.

Accessing the log explorer

To access the Log explorer, select the More actions {ellipsis_v} menu on a metrics dashboard and select View logs, or:

1. Sign in as a user with the View pod logs permissions in the project.

2. To navigate to the Log Explorer from the sidebar menu, go to Monitor > Logs (Introduced in GitLab 12.5.).

3. To navigate to the Log Explorer from a specific pod on a deploy board:

   1. Go to Deployments > Environments and find the environment which contains the desired pod, like production.
   2. On the Environments page, you should see the status of the environment's pods with deploy boards.
   3. When mousing over the list of pods, GitLab displays a tooltip with the exact pod name and status.
   4. Select the desired pod to display the Log Explorer.

Logs view

The Log Explorer lets you filter the logs by:

• Pods.
• From GitLab 12.4, environments.
• From GitLab 12.7, full text search.
• From GitLab 12.8, dates.
• From GitLab 13.2, managed apps.

Loading more than 500 log lines is possible from GitLab 12.9 onward.

Support for pods with multiple containers is coming in a future release.

Support for historical data is coming in a future release.

Filter by date

Introduced in GitLab 12.8.

When you enable Elastic Stack on your cluster, you can filter logs displayed in the Log Explorer by date.

Select Show last in the Log Explorer to see the available options.

Full text search

Introduced in GitLab 12.7.

When you enable Elastic Stack on your cluster, you can search the content of your logs through a search bar. The search is passed to Elasticsearch using the simple_query_string Elasticsearch function, which supports the following operators:

Operator	Description
|	An OR operation.
-	Negates a single token.
+	An AND operation.
"	Wraps a number of tokens to signify a phrase for searching.
* (at the end of a term)	A prefix query.
( and )	Precedence.
~N (after a word)	Edit distance (fuzziness).
~N (after a phrase)	Slop amount.