[HN Gopher] Show HN: Kubetail - Real-time log search for Kubernetes
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Show HN: Kubetail - Real-time log search for Kubernetes
Hi Everyone! Kubetail is a general-purpose logging dashboard for
Kubernetes, optimized for tailing logs across multi-container
workloads in real-time. With Kubetail, you can view logs from all
the containers in a workload (e.g. Deployment or DaemonSet) merged
into a single chronological timeline, delivered to your browser or
terminal. I launched Kubetail on HN last year and at that time the
top request was to add search. Now I'm happy to say we finally have
search available in our latest official release (cli/v0.4.3,
helm/v0.10.1). You can check it out in action here:
https://www.kubetail.com/demo Kubetail normally fetches logs using
the Kubernetes API, which does not have search built-in. To enable
search, click the "Install" button in the GUI or run `kubetail
cluster install` in the CLI to deploy a DaemonSet that places a
Kubetail agent on every node. Each agent runs a custom Rust binary
powered by ripgrep; it scans the node's log files and streams only
matching lines to your browser or terminal. You can think of a
Kubetail search as "remote grep" for your Kubernetes logs. Now you
don't need to download an entire log file just to grep it locally.
Since last year we've also added some other neat features that
users find helpful. In particular, we built a simple CLI tool that
starts the web dashboard on your desktop: #
Install brew install kubetail # Run
kubetail serve We also added a powerful logs sub-command to
the CLI that you can use to follow container logs or even fetch all
the records in a given time window to analyze them in more detail
locally (quick-start): # Follow example $
kubetail logs deployments/web \ --with-ts \
--with-pod \ --follow # Fetch example
$ kubetail logs deployments/web \ --since
2025-04-20T00:00:00Z \ --until 2025-04-21T00:00:00Z \
--all > logs.txt We've added a lot more features since last
year but these are the ones I wanted to highlight. I hope you like
what we're doing with Kubetail! Your feedback is very valuable so
please let us know what you think in the comments here or in our
Discord chat. Andres
Author : andres
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-05-01 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| glitchcrab wrote:
| My personal preference for log tailing is Stern. It doesn't have
| a web UI but then I've never felt like I needed one.
|
| https://github.com/stern/stern
| LetMeLogin wrote:
| Stern is the best!
| andres wrote:
| If you get a chance to try out the Kubetail CLI, I'd love to
| hear your thoughts! There's a lot of overlap with stern at the
| moment but we're planning on adding new features soon that will
| be unique (e.g. remote grep, system logs).
| carlgreene wrote:
| Wow, this is exactly what I've been missing--juggling a dozen
| kubectl logs windows and still losing context. Seeing all
| container logs merged in real time is a game-changer for
| debugging multi-pod workloads. Love that it runs locally against
| the API--no more sending sensitive logs offsite. Big thanks to
| the author for saving my sanity here!
| andres wrote:
| Thanks! Your comment made my day! It sounds like your use-case
| is similar to mine when I started working on the project. Now
| we have a community of contributors working on Kubetail so if
| you have time, stop by our Discord and let us know what else we
| can do to help (https://discord.gg/CmsmWAVkvX).
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Damn, if you took out the "Kubernetes" part, and made it
| generalized, it looks like you built something that I have wanted
| to see for a long time. I think log explorers work best as a GUI,
| and that they need deep integration with structured logs.
| Basically I just want the DataDog log explorer but locally, and
| able to simply intake from some files. Some have tried, but they
| are always too simple, not parsing out properties of structured
| logs and building good filtering on top of that. I think setting
| up Grafana/Loki/Whatever is way too heavy for such a simple ask.
|
| Anyway all that is anecdotal, what you made here is really cool!
| andres wrote:
| Thanks! Part of what enables us to make a helpful lightweight
| solution is that we're leveraging the Kubernetes API to give
| logs context without requiring extra configuration. It'd be
| great to generalize Kubetail but a lot of that depends on how
| cloud platforms evolve over the next few years. Do you use
| Kubernetes?
| ai-christianson wrote:
| This looks awesome --do you cache or store the logs, or is that
| left up to k8s?
| andres wrote:
| Thanks! Kubetail doesn't cache or store logs itself. By
| default, it uses the Kubernetes API to fetch logs from your
| cluster and send them directly to your client (browser or
| terminal). If the "Kubetail Cluster API" is installed then it
| uses Kubetail's custom agent to do the same.
| ai-christianson wrote:
| Presumably I can install this (the web frontend) into k8s
| itself. Is there a helm chart or kustomize?
|
| Would be really cool to install it into k8s and just hit a
| hosted web endpoint with all the logs and grep/exploration
| capabilities kubetail has.
| andres wrote:
| Yep! You can use Kubetail on your desktop (using the CLI
| tool) or you can install it directly in your cluster using
| helm: helm repo add kubetail
| https://kubetail-org.github.io/helm-charts/ helm
| install kubetail kubetail/kubetail --namespace kubetail-
| system --create-namespace
|
| Then you can access it using `kubectl proxy` or `kubectl
| port-forward`: kubectl port-forward -n
| kubetail-system svc/kubetail-dashboard 8080:8080
|
| You can also configure an ingress using the values.yaml
| file (https://github.com/kubetail-org/helm-
| charts/blob/main/charts...)
| hnlub wrote:
| Not to be confused with the other kubetail that also does kube
| log things.
|
| https://github.com/johanhaleby/kubetail
| andres wrote:
| Thanks for posting a link to Johan's project. I'm in touch with
| him to figure out the best way to avoid confusing users.
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