Logs
You can view the live logs for a Convox application using convox logs:
$ convox logs
2025-04-12T19:45:00Z service/web/4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942 10.0.1.242 - - [12/Apr/2025:19:45:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 70 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
2025-04-12T19:45:00Z service/web/4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942 10.0.1.242 - - [12/Apr/2025:19:45:00 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 70 0.0019
Retention
By default, new applications will retain 7 days worth of logs. You can control the retention window (in numbers of days) through the LogRetention app-level parameter.
$ convox apps params set LogRetention=3
To set an unlimited retention window, configure the parameter to be blank/empty.
$ convox apps params set LogRetention=
Warning: Setting the retention window to a high/unlimited value will affect the performance/reliability of
convox logsover the long term. Keep it at a smaller value and use syslog to export your logs for long-term archival and analysis.
Additional Options
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
--filter=POST |
Return only the logs that match all the filters. Filters are case sensitive and non-alphanumeric terms must be inside double quotes. |
--since=20m |
Return logs starting this duration ago. Values are a duration like 10m or 48h. |
--no-follow |
Return the logs in the --since window and exit instead of following new logs. |
You can tie all these together to generate a report from the logs over the last 2 days, filtering by a specific term:
$ convox ps
ID SERVICE STATUS RELEASE STARTED COMMAND
310481bf223f web running RSPZQWVWGOP 2 days ago bin/web
5e3c8576b942 web running RSPZQWVWGOP 2 days ago bin/web
$ convox logs --filter=GET --since=48h --no-follow
2025-04-25T21:12:02Z service/web/4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942 10.0.3.243 - - [25/Apr/2025:21:12:02 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 226
2025-04-25T21:12:03Z service/web/4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942 10.0.3.243 - - [25/Apr/2025:21:12:02 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 226
2025-04-25T21:12:04Z service/web/4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942 10.0.3.243 - - [25/Apr/2025:21:12:02 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 226
...
AWS Logs
We include events from AWS services in the output of convox logs to help you understand what's going on behind the scenes.
2025-01-15T14:34:08Z system/ecs aws/ecs (service production-myapp-ServiceWeb-1A2B3C4D5E6F-Service-7G8H9I0J1K2L) has started 1 tasks: (task 4f0d9a3c1b2e7f6a8d905e3c8576b942).
2025-01-15T14:35:12Z system/ecs aws/ecs (service production-myapp-ServiceWeb-1A2B3C4D5E6F-Service-7G8H9I0J1K2L) has reached a steady state.
2025-01-15T14:59:56Z system/cloudformation aws/cfm production-myapp UPDATE_IN_PROGRESS ServiceWeb
2025-01-15T15:02:30Z system/cloudformation aws/cfm production-myapp UPDATE_COMPLETE ServiceWeb
2025-01-15T15:02:34Z system/cloudformation aws/cfm production-myapp UPDATE_COMPLETE production-myapp
These events can be useful for identifying issues with a deployment or an App. For example, when your Rack is in a "converging" state, i.e. some instances or ECS Tasks haven't stabilized yet, there are often AWS events in the App/Rack logs that will show a Service crashing, a health check failing, or a placement error due to insufficient resources.
Rack Logs
You can view the logs for a Convox Rack itself using the convox rack logs command:
$ convox rack logs
2025-01-15T14:59:57Z service/web/0b92eed79c1d4b6e8f0a1c2d3e4f5a6b id=a1b2c3d4e5f6 ns=api at=SystemGet method="GET" path="/system" response=200 elapsed=70.493
2025-01-15T15:16:15Z service/monitor/e378ddb167fd4c5d6e7f8a9b0c1d2e3f who="EC2/ASG" what="Terminating EC2 instance: i-02ce4f07da10a5333" why="At 2025-01-15T15:14:38Z a user request update of AutoScalingGroup constraints to min: 3, max: 1000, desired: 3 changing the desired capacity from 4 to 3. At 2025-01-15T15:15:02Z an instance was taken out of service in response to a difference between desired and actual capacity, shrinking the capacity from 4 to 3. At 2025-01-15T15:15:02Z instance i-02ce4f07da10a5333 was selected for termination."
Routing Logs to a 3rd Party
See the dedicated section to Syslogs here...
Disabling logging system
You can disable the logging system by setting LogDriver as empty:
$ convox rack params set LogDriver=""
It will not create a CloudWatch LogGroup, existing LogGroups will not be deleted. Be aware that disabling it, convox logs and convox rack logs will stop working.
See Also
