Logging

The calico-node container

The components in the calico-node container all log to the directories under /var/log/calico inside the container. By default this is mapped to the /var/log/calico directory on the host but can be changed by specifying a --log-dir parameter on the calicoctl node command.

By default, each component (below) logs to its own directory. Files are automatically rotated, and by default 10 files of 1MB each are kept. The current log file is called current and rotated files have @ followed by a timestamp detailing when the files was rotated in tai64n format.

All logging is done using svlogd. Each component can be configured by dropping a file named config into that component’s logging directory.

e.g. to configure bird to only log 4 files of 10KB each

#/var/log/calico/bird/config
s10000
n4

svlogd can also be configured to forward logs to syslog, to prefix each line and to filter logs. See the documentation for further details.

See the following sub-sections for details on configuring the log level for each calico-node component.

Bird/Bird6

Bird and Bird6 are used for distributing IPv4 and IPv6 routes between Calico enabled hosts.

Use the calicoctl config bgp loglevel command on any host to change the log level across all BGP nodes, or use the calicoctl config node bgp loglevel command on a specific host to change the log level for that specific BGP node.

Valid log levels are: none, debug and info. e.g.

    calicoctl config bgp loglevel none
    calicoctl config node bgp loglevel debug

Felix

Felix is the primary Calico agent that runs on each machine that hosts endpoints. Felix is responsible for the programming of iptables rules on the host.

Use the calicoctl config felix loglevel command on any host to change the log level on all Felix instances.

Valid log levels are: none, debug, info, warning, error, critical

    calicoctl config felix loglevel error

confd

The confd agent generates configuration files for Felix and Bird using configuration data present in the etcd datastore.

To change the log level, edit the node_filesystem/etc/service/confd/run and rebuild the calico-node image.

For more information on the allowed levels, see the documentation

Docker network and IPAM driver

When running Calico as a Docker network plugin (i.e. using the --libnetwork option on the calicoctl node command), the Calico driver is run inside the calico/node container.

The logs may be viewed running the standard docker logs command for this container. e.g.

docker logs calico-node