This blog post provides a detailed guide on viewing logs and inspecting containers, which are crucial tasks for troubleshooting and monitoring your Dockerized applications. We'll cover essential commands like docker logs and docker inspect, explaining their usage with practical examples.
Viewing Container Logs with docker logs
The docker logs command is your primary tool for accessing the output of your running containers. This output can include anything printed to standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) by the application inside the container.
Basic Usage:
docker logs <container_name_or_ID>
Options:
-f or --follow: Follow log output in real-time, similar to tail -f. This is incredibly useful for monitoring ongoing activity within a container.
-t or --timestamps: Include timestamps in the log output, making it easier to correlate events and debug time-sensitive issues.
--tail: Display only the last few lines of the log. For example, --tail 10 shows the last 10 lines.
--since: Show logs since a specific timestamp or duration. Examples: `--since
