logs
View stored output from managed services.Info: From the interactivesysg statustable, select a UNIT with Tab/arrow navigation and press L to jump straight into that unit’s logs. The status shortcut runssysg logs -s <UNIT> -l 100 --stream 2, which shows the latest 100 lines and refreshes the snapshot every 2 seconds.
Options
| Short | Long | Description |
|---|---|---|
-c | --config | Path to configuration file |
- | --purge | Reset log files instead of displaying them |
- | --prune | Delete rotated log backups instead of displaying logs (requires --max-size and/or --max-age) |
- | --max-size | When pruning, cap total rotated-backup size (e.g. 500MB, 2g) |
- | --max-age | When pruning, remove rotated backups older than this (e.g. 7d, 12h) |
-s | --service | The name of the service whose logs should be displayed (optional) |
-p | --project | Filter logs by stable project id |
-l | --lines | Number of lines to show (default: 50) |
-k | --kind | Kind of logs to show: stdout, stderr, or supervisor. Omit this flag to show stdout+stderr together |
- | --stream | Continuously refresh the latest log snapshot at the provided interval (e.g., 5, 1s, 2m) |
- | --sys | Opt into privileged system mode. Requires running as root |
- | --log-level | Set verbosity (debug, info, warn, error) |
Examples
View recent logs from all services
View logs from specific service
Info: By default,sysg logsshows a stacked stdout+stderr stream in capture order. systemg adds its own UTC capture timestamp and stream label to service output as it is written, then reads the combined service log for the default view. Use--kind stdoutor--kind stderrwhen you need a single stream only.
Purge logs for a specific service
api’s current stdout and stderr log files in place and does not print logs.
Purge logs for all services
supervisor.log, in place and does not print logs.
View stderr logs
View supervisor logs
Show more history
Stream snapshots
--lines entries.
Prune rotated backups
{name}.log.1, {name}.log.2, …) older than
--max-age and then trims the remaining backups oldest-first until their total
size is under --max-size. Active .log files are never touched. At least one
of --max-size or --max-age is required.
Log files
Logs are stored in~/.local/share/systemg/logs/:
{service}.log- Canonical stdout+stderr stream in capture order{service}_stdout.log/{service}_stderr.log- Legacy split-stream files from older systemg versions, still read as a fallback when no canonical log existssupervisor.log- systemg’s own log output
Rotation and retention
Every active log file (service logs andsupervisor.log) is size-capped. When
an active file would exceed logs.max_bytes (default 10 MiB) it is rotated
to {name}.log.1, older backups shift up, and at most logs.max_files
(default 5) numbered backups are retained. A single log event larger than
16 KiB is truncated with a …[truncated N bytes] marker before it is
written, so one oversized payload cannot blow past the size cap. Tune the caps
with the logs.max_bytes / logs.max_files config keys, globally or per
service.
systemg’s own verbosity is info by default and honors per-crate RUST_LOG
directives (for example RUST_LOG=mycrate=debug,noisycrate=warn), so enabling
debug for one target does not pull in dependency-wide debug noise.
Each captured service line is stored with a systemg capture timestamp and stream
label:
Performance model
For the defaultfile logging sink, systemg captures each service’s stdout and stderr through pipes and writes both streams through one per-service writer into {service}.log. On Linux and macOS, the default sysg logs view tails that file directly with tail -F in follow mode. --kind stdout and --kind stderr filter recent captured lines by the stored stream label. The command itself is lightweight; the continuous cost comes from the capture threads, one writer thread, and one append-only file write path per service.
For high-output production workloads, configure logs.sink: none globally or per service to discard service output and avoid systemg log-writer threads, pipe backpressure from log capture, and file growth.