A short post for today but it relates to a tool that every Kubernetes user should have in their toolbox: kail. Although most users probably know that kubectl logs will, by default, show the logs for all containers in a pod and that it has --tail and -f options, fewer probably know that is has a -l option to select pods based on label. Kail takes tailing Kubernetes logs to a whole new level.
For Homebrew users, it’s available via brew install boz/repo/kail. When executed without any arguments it tails logs for all containers in the cluster which is probably not what you want unless your cluster is very quiet! There are, however, flags to let you filter not just on pod, container, and label, but also namespace, deployment, replica set, ingress, service, or node. Flags of the same type are ORed together, different flags are ANDed. And that’s pretty much all there is to it but anyone who finds themselves watching the logs of any moderately complex application will wonder how they lived without it!