Reviewing the console logs

Console logs are critical for troubleshooting the startup process of an instance. These logs are produced at boot time, before the console becomes available. Typically, when working with cloud hosted instances, accessing these can be difficult. OpenStack Compute provides a mechanism for accessing the console logs.

Getting ready

To access the console logs of an instance, the following information is required:

• The openstack command-line client

• The openrc file containing appropriate credentials

• The name or ID of the instance

For this example, we will view the last five lines of the cookbook.test instance.

How to do it…

To show the console logs of an instance, use the following command:

openstack console log show --lines 5 cookbook.test

This connects to the serial console output of an instance, mimicking the information as if a monitor was directly attached to a physical server:

[[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started udev Coldplug all Devices.
[[0;32m  OK  [0m] Started Dispatch Password...