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Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

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Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#11

Post by ai-christianson »

andres wrote: post #10
ai-christianson wrote: post #9

This looks awesome --do you cache or store the logs, or is that left up to k8s?

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#12

Post by andres »

ai-christianson wrote: post #11
andres wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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...)

Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#15

Post by AYBABTME »

corytheboyd wrote: post #6

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 prope…

Sorry for bringing up my own side-project on a "Show HN", but I'm making humanlog.io which does exactly what you want. Local-first log query engine (and tracing too, soon). You feed it your logs and you can search them, aggregate them, and soon make some graphs and dashboards with them. It started as just a CLI tool to parse and make structured logs pretty, and now I'm turning it into a full observability tool on your machine.

It's very WIP but I would love to help you get started if you want to try it out.

Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#18

Post by rc00 »

glitchcrab wrote: post #2

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

+1 for Stern especially since it only has Go dependencies whereas Kubetail does not. Ease of integration with an existing stack is a bigger addition than the lack of a web UI is a subtraction.

Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#19

Post by biot »

carlgreene wrote: post #5

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!

While the search offered is handy, I watch logs on multi-pod workloads via:

    kubectl logs -f -l app=api --max-log-requests=50
This follows along all pods with the given label (app: api) for up to 50 pods or however many you want. Quite useful when I'm looking for specific output such as ERROR logs to just pipe it to grep like this:

    kubectl logs -f -l app=api --max-log-requests=50 | grep ERROR
and get realtime filtering of all log output without having to tail individual pods by name.

Re: Show HN: Kubetail – Real-time log search for Kubernetes

#20

Post by andres »

badmonster wrote: post #16

How does it compare to tools like Loki/Grafana or Stern?

Kubetail is more lightweight than Loki/Grafana. It fetches logs using the Kubernetes API which means you can only see the current state of the cluster but you can use it without installing any additional software or provisioning storage. Our new search feature greps container log files on the nodes themselves as compared to Loki/Grafana that builds a full-text index in the background and queries that at search time (I think).

Stern is a CLI tool which more closely compares to the Kubetail CLI tool (as opposed to the Kubetail web interface). Currently, there's a lot of overlap between the two tools but Kubetail gives you more control over source filters and time. For example with the Kubetail CLI tool you can do queries like this:

    kubetail logs deployments/web \
      --since 2025-05-01T00:00:00Z \
      --until 2025-05-02T00:00:00Z \
      --zone us-east-1a \
      --with-ts \
      --with-node \
      --with-pod \
      --tail=100
I'm not too familiar with stern though so please correct me if I'm wrong. In any case, soon we're going to add more features to the Kubetail CLI tool that will be unique (e.g. remote grep, system logs).
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