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Docker Docker Daemon Logs

Docker engine logs for daemon operations, API calls, and container lifecycle

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Quick Facts

Default Path (Linux)
journalctl -u docker
Default Format
systemd journal or text
JSON Native
No
Rotation
journald or logrotate

Log Example

Default format: journald format

Example Log Entrylog
Dec 20 14:32:18 dockerhost dockerd[1234]: time="2025-12-20T14:32:18.123456789Z" level=info msg="Container started" container=abc123

Structure:

timestamp hostname docker[pid]: message

Paths by Platform

Ubuntu / Debian (systemd)
journalctl -u docker.service
RHEL / CentOS (systemd)
journalctl -u docker.service
Without systemd
/var/log/docker.log

Available Formats

journald format

Default

Example:

Dec 20 14:32:18 dockerhost dockerd[1234]: time="2025-12-20T14:32:18.123456789Z" level=info msg="Container started" container=abc123

Structure:

timestamp hostname docker[pid]: message

Fields Reference

FieldTypeDescriptionExample
time
datetime
Event timestamp2025-12-20T14:32:18.123456789Z
level
string
Log levelinfo
msg
string
Log messageContainer started
container
string
Container ID (when applicable)abc123def456

Parsing Patterns

Collector Configurations

journalctlyaml
1# View docker daemon logs
2journalctl -u docker.service -f
3
4# View last 100 lines
5journalctl -u docker.service -n 100
6
7# View logs since specific time
8journalctl -u docker.service --since "2025-12-20 14:00:00"
9
10# Export to JSON
11journalctl -u docker.service -o json

Configuration

Enable Logging

Configure daemon log level in daemon.json

/etc/docker/daemon.json
{
  "debug": false,
  "log-level": "info"
}

Use Cases

Container lifecycle

Track container create/start/stop/remove

msg
container

Docker API errors

API request failures

level
msg

Troubleshooting

Tested On

v27.4.0 on Ubuntu 24.04
container_expert - 2025-12-10
Last updated: 2025-12-10 by admin
1 contributor67 upvotes
Validated

Community Discussions

Help improve this documentation

Found an error or want to add more examples? Contributions are welcome!

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