Log Management

Chef Automate uses systemd. Log management is performed according to the configuration defined for the system service journald.

Viewing Logs

To view the logs you can run:

journalctl -u chef-automate

To follow the logs in realtime:

journalctl -u chef-automate -f

For information on changing the output, please refer to the man page or run:

journalctl --help

Configuring Log Level

You can configure Chef Automate log level for all services by creating a TOML file and configuring the log level. By default each service will initialize at the “info” level but can be any of ‘debug, ‘info’, ‘warning’, ‘panic’, or ‘fatal’.

[global.v1.log]
level = "debug"

Then run chef-automate config patch </path/to/your-file.toml> to deploy your change.

Configuring Log Rotation and Retention

Log rotation and retention settings are managed at a system level using journald. At this point, journald does not support log retention policies at a granular level for units within itself. See the man page for more configuration options in /etc/systemd/journald.conf.