Command-line interface

The Google Cloud CLI has a group of commands, gcloud logging, that provide a command-line interface to the Logging API. A summary of the important commands and examples of their use are shown on this page.

For additional information, go to the following sources:

• For detailed documentation on the Logging Google Cloud CLI, read the reference pages for the gcloud logging command group. There might also be new or changed commands in the beta command group: gcloud beta logging.
• For documentation on the Logging API, read Cloud Logging API.

Getting started

1. In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

   Activate Cloud Shell

   At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

2. Set your default project so you don't have to supply the --project flag with each command:

   gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID

After you've installed and initialized the Google Cloud CLI, you can run gcloud logging commands from the command line in the same way you use other command-line tools.

Permissions

gcloud logging commands are controlled by Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions.

To use any of the gcloud logging commands, you must have the serviceusage.services.use permission. You must also have the IAM role that corresponds to the log's location, and to your use case:

For additional information on required Logging IAM roles and permissions, go to Access control.

Summary of commands

The following sections provide summaries and examples of the gcloud CLI command-line interface for Logging. However, some command options and details are omitted; the online documentation for the gcloud CLI commands is authoritative.

From the command line, you can add --help to a partial command to get more details. For example:

gcloud logging --help
gcloud logging sinks --help
gcloud logging sinks create --help

In a few cases, important command features in the Beta version of the gcloud CLI are available:

gcloud beta logging metrics create --help

Over time, Beta features might be rolled into the standard release and new features might be added to the Beta release.

Log entries

You can write and read log entries using gcloud.

Writing log entries

Use the gcloud logging write command, corresponding to the API method entries.write.

gcloud logging write LOG_NAME  ...

LOG_NAME can either be the LOG_ID or the full resource name of the log with the LOG_ID URL-encoded.

For simplicity, this command makes several assumptions about the log entry. For example, it always sets the resource type to global.

Examples

Write a log entry to log my-test-log in the current project with a plain-text payload and a severity of ERROR:

gcloud logging write my-test-log "A simple entry" --severity=ERROR

Write a log entry with a structured (JSON) payload:

gcloud logging write my-test-log '{ "message": "My second entry", "weather": "partly cloudy"}' --payload-type=json

Write a log entry to a folder, billing account, or organization. The following command writes a log entry to a folder:

gcloud logging write my-folder-log "A folder log entry"  --folder=FOLDER_ID

To find your log entries, look in the Logs Explorer under the Global resource type.

You can also gcloud logging read or the corresponding API method. See the example in Reading log entries.

Reading log entries

To retrieve log entries, use the gcloud logging read command, corresponding to the API method entries.list:

gcloud logging read FILTER ...

To read log entries in folders, billing accounts, or organizations, append the --folder, --billing-account, or --organization options.

Examples

Read up to 10 log entries in your project's syslog log from Compute Engine instances containing payloads that include the word SyncAddress. The log entries are to be shown in JSON format:

gcloud logging read "resource.type=gce_instance AND logName=projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/syslog AND textPayload:SyncAddress" --limit 10 --format json

Following is an example of one returned log entry:

{
  "insertId": "2024-04-07|08:56:48.137651-07|10.162.32.129|-1509625619",
  "logName": "projects/[PROJECT_ID]/logs/syslog",
  "resource": {
    "labels": {
      "instance_id": "15543007601548829999",
      "zone": "global"
    },
    "type": "gce_instance"
  },
  "textPayload": "Apr  7 15:56:47 my-gce-instance google-address-manager: ERROR SyncAddresses exception: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable",
  "timestamp": "2024-04-07T15:56:47.000Z"
}

To list logs in a folder, add the --folder flag. That flag restricts the log entries read to only those in the folder itself. The same applies to the --organization and --billing-account flags. The following command retrieves activity-type audit logs from a folder. Log entries are to be shown in the default YAML format:

gcloud logging read "resource.type=folder AND logName:cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity" --folder=FOLDER_ID

Following is an excerpt of one returned entry. It records a call to SetIamPolicy on the folder:

insertId: mhcr1tc16u
logName: folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
protoPayload:
  '@type': type.googleapis.com/google.cloud.audit.AuditLog
  methodName: SetIamPolicy
  ...
  serviceName: cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com
  status: {}
resource:
  labels:
    folder_id: 'FOLDER_ID'
  type: folder
severity: NOTICE
timestamp: '2024-03-19T16:26:49.308Z'

The previous section, Writing log entries, contains an example of writing a log entry to a folder. Following is the command to read the log entry:

gcloud logging read "resource.type=global" --folder=FOLDER_ID --limit=1

Here is the result:

insertId: 1f22es3frcguaj
logName: folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/my-folder-log
receiveTimestamp: '2024-03-19T18:20:19.306598482Z'
resource:
  type: global
textPayload: A folder log entry
timestamp: '2024-03-19T18:20:19.306598482Z'

Logs

A log, or log stream, is the set of log entries that have the same full resource name. The full resource name is equivalent to the LogName field in the LogEntry.

The full resource name for a log must be one of the following:

projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/LOG_ID
organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/LOG_ID
folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/LOG_ID
billingAccounts/BILLING_ACCOUNT_ID/logs/LOG_ID

LOG_ID can only contain alphanumeric characters, forward-slash, underscore, hyphen, and period characters. For example, compute.googleapis.com/activity_log is a valid LOG_ID. The full resource name includes the project, folder, billing account, or organization in which the log is located. For more information, go to Google Cloud resource hierarchy.

To manage logs, use the gcloud logging logs command group:

gcloud logging logs list  ...
gcloud logging logs delete  ...

URL Encoding

When passing the full resource name of a log to a gcloud logging command, you must URL-encode the LOG_ID. As an example, a LOG_ID of compute.googleapis.com/activity_log encodes to compute.googleapis.com%2Factivity_log.

When passing the LOG_ID to a gcloud logging command, you don't need to URL-encode the LOG_ID. In this case, the gcloud command encodes for you.

When receiving data that includes the full resource name of a log from a gcloud logging command, the LOG_ID is URL-encoded.

Creating logs

You create a log by writing a log entry to it. See Writing log entries.

Listing log names

Use the gcloud logging logs list command. It executes the API method projects.logs/list.

Only logs that contain log entries are displayed. The display lists full resource names of logs with the LOG_ID URL-encoded.

You can only use gcloud logging logs list to list logs in projects; you can't use it to list logs in folders, billing accounts, or organizations.

Example

List the logs in the current project:

gcloud logging logs list

Sample result:

NAME
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/apache-error
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Factivity_log
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Fsystem_log
projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/syslog

Deleting logs

To delete logs, use the gcloud logging logs delete command. It decides, based on the full resource name of a log, which of the following delete API commands to execute: projects.logs, organizations.logs, folders.logs, or billingAccounts.logs.

Example: Delete a project log

To delete a log that exists in the current project using the LOG_ID:

gcloud logging logs delete my-new-log

Really delete all log entries from
[my-new-log]?g_logs
Do you want to continue (Y/n)?  Y
Deleted [my-new-log].

An alternative is to specify the full resource name of a log with the LOG_ID URL-encoded:

gcloud logging logs delete projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Factivity_log

Really delete all log entries from
[projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Factivity_log]?
Do you want to continue (Y/n)?  Y
Deleted [projects/pamstestproject1/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Factivity_log].

Example: Delete logs in folders, billing accounts or organizations

To delete a log contained in folders, billing accounts or organizations, pass the full resource name with the LOG_ID URL-encoded. For example, the following command deletes a log in a folder:

gcloud logging logs delete folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/my-folder-log

FOLDER_ID must be the unique number that identifies the folder.

Live tailing log entries

Live tailing lets you view your log entries in real time as Cloud Logging writes them, by using either the Google Cloud CLI or the Cloud Logging API.

Live tailing isn't supported for log buckets with field-level access controls, however you can stream logs for those buckets in the Logs Explorer.

For information on the API method for live tailing, see the entries.tail method.

Installing gcloud alpha logging tail

To use gcloud alpha logging tail, you need to have Python 3 and the grpcio Python package installed.

For instructions on how to install Python, see the Python page. For instructions on how to install the Python package manager, pip, that is needed to install the grpcio package, see The Python Package Installer page.

Complete the following steps to install gcloud alpha logging tail:

1. Verify that you have the Google Cloud CLI installed. For instructions on how to install the Google Cloud CLI, see Installing Google Cloud CLI.

2. Verify that you're using version 302.0.0 or greater of the gcloud CLI.

   gcloud version
   

   For instructions on updating the gcloud CLI, see gcloud components update.

3. Install the gcloud CLI alpha components:

   gcloud components install alpha
   

4. For MacOS, Linux, and Cloud Shell users:

   1. Install gRPC client libraries:

       sudo pip3 install grpcio
      

   2. Set the environment variable CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES to any value:

       export CLOUDSDK_PYTHON_SITEPACKAGES=1
      

5. Use the following commands to set your Google Cloud project ID and to authenticate:

   gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
   gcloud auth login
   

   To get the project ID, see Creating and managing projects.

6. Verify that gcloud alpha logging tail is installed by running the following command:

   gcloud alpha logging tail
   

   The command displays the following message:

   Initializing tail session.

   You are now viewing the log entries for your Google Cloud project as Logging writes them.

   

For more information on using live tailing, see the gcloud alpha logging tail reference guide.

Buffering and ordering

Because Logging can receive log entries out of chronological order, live tailing provides a buffer-window setting so you can balance the tradeoff between viewing the log entries as they are being written and viewing them in ascending order. You can set the buffer window between 0 and 60 seconds.

Note the following characteristics of the buffer window:

• The default buffer window is two seconds.

• Logging delays writing the log entries to log buckets for the duration of the buffer window.

• If a log entry is written outside of the buffer window, then Logging returns the log entries as they are received.

When configuring the buffer window, you make a tradeoff between viewing logs as they are written and viewing the entries out of order.

Limits and quotas

The following table lists the limits and quotas for live tailing:

Client limitations

For a Google Cloud project that writes lots of entries quickly, your client might be unable to consume them as quickly as they're being written. In this case, Logging limits the total number of entries sent, prioritizing the most recent entries. At the end of the tail session, Logging returns the number of entries that were not displayed due to the limits of the client.

Resource descriptors

All log entries contain an instance of one of a fixed set of monitored resource types that generally identifies the resource the log entry comes from, such as a particular Compute Engine VM instance. For a list of monitored resource types, go to Monitored Resource List.

To list the current resource descriptor types, use the gcloud logging resource-descriptors list command, corresponding to the API method monitoredResourceDescriptors.list. You don't need any special permissions to list the resource types.

Examples

List all the resource types that have instance in their names:

gcloud logging resource-descriptors list --filter="type:instance"

Result:

TYPE                        DESCRIPTION                                                 KEY
gce_instance                A virtual machine instance hosted in Compute Engine. project_id,instance_id,zone
spanner_instance            A Cloud Spanner instance.                                   project_id,instance_id,location,instance_config
redis_instance              A Redis instance hosted on Google Cloud MemoryStore.        project_id,region,instance_id,node_id
gce_instance_group          A Compute Engine instance group resource.            project_id,instance_group_id,instance_group_name,location
gce_instance_group_manager  A Compute Engine instance group manager resource.    project_id,instance_group_manager_id,instance_group_manager_name,location
gce_instance_template       A Compute Engine instance template resource.         project_id,instance_template_id,instance_template_name

Routing logs

You route logs by creating sinks that send certain log entries to supported destinations. For more information about sinks, see Routing and storage overview: Sinks.

Use the gcloud logging sinks command group, corresponding to the API methods projects.sinks, folders.sinks, billingAccounts.sinks, and organizations.sinks.

Sinks can be located wherever logs are located: projects, folders, billing accounts, and organizations. Use the gcloud logging flags --folder, --billing-account, or --organization to refer to those locations. Omitting them defaults to the project specified by --project or the current project.

Creating sinks

Use the gcloud logging sinks create command, corresponding to the API method projects.sinks.create:

gcloud logging sinks create SINK_NAME SINK_DESTINATION  --log-filter="..." ...

Destination authorization. To determine the writer identity service account for your new sink, use the describe command in the next section to fetch the new sink's properties. You need the service account to authorize the sink to write to its destination. The gcloud logging command doesn't perform the authorization for you, as the Logs Explorer does. For more information, see Destination permissions.

Aggregated sinks. You can use one of the --folder, --billing-account, and --organization flags if you want to route the logs from that resource. You have the following options:

• By default, using the previous flags restricts the sink to routing only the logs held in the named folder, organization, or billing account.
• If you additionally add the --include-children flag, then the sink becomes an aggregated sink and the sink routes logs from all folders and projects contained within the named resource, subject to the filter in the --log-filter flag.
• Billing accounts don't contain folders or projects, so --include-children has no effect with --billing-account.

For more information and examples, see Collate and route organization-level logs to supported destinations.

Examples

Create a sink, syslog-errors, in the current project that routes syslog entries with severity ERROR from Compute Engine VM instances. The destination is an existing Cloud Storage bucket in the current project:

gcloud logging sinks create syslog-errors  \
    storage.googleapis.com/my-third-gcs-bucket \
    --log-filter "resource.type=gce_instance AND logName=projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/compute.googleapis.com%2Fsyslog AND severity=ERROR"

Create a sink, syslog-sink, in the current project that routes all syslog entries with severity WARNING or higher. The destination is a new Pub/Sub topic in the current project, and the sink service account, shown in the output of the logging sinks create command, is granted an IAM role that lets the service account publish content to the topic.

gcloud pubsub topics create syslog-sink-topic
gcloud logging sinks create syslog-sink pubsub.googleapis.com/projects/MY-PROJECT/topics/syslog-sink-topic \
     --log-filter="severity>=WARNING"
gcloud pubsub topics add-iam-policy-binding syslog-sink-topic \
     --member serviceAccount:LOG-SINK-SERVICE-ACCOUNT --role roles/pubsub.publisher

Create a sink, folder-logs in a folder FOLDER_ID that routes the Admin Activity audit logs from the folder. The destination is an existing Cloud Storage bucket in the current project.

gcloud logging sinks create folder-logs  \
    storage.googleapis.com/my-folder-bucket \
    --folder=FOLDER_ID --log-filter="logName:logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity"

The following command creates an aggregated sink, routing all Admin Activity audit logs from a folder and from all folders and projects contained in the folder:

gcloud logging sinks create folder-logs  --include-children \
    storage.googleapis.com/my-folder-bucket \
    --folder=FOLDER_ID --log-filter="logName:logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity"

Listing or describing sinks

Use the gcloud logging sinks list or gcloud logging sinks describe commands, corresponding to the API methods projects.sinks.list and projects.sinks.get, respectively:

gcloud logging sinks list
gcloud logging sinks describe SINK_NAME

Examples

List sinks in the current project:

gcloud logging sinks list

NAME                            DESTINATION                                                                   FILTER
google-sink-1481139614360-9906  storage.googleapis.com/my-second-gcs-bucket                                   logName = "projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/syslog"
pubsub-logs-sink                pubsub.googleapis.com/projects/my-gcp-project-id/topics/my-pubsub-logs-topic  logName = "projects/my-gcp-project-id/logs/pubsubtestlog"
test-sink-v4                    storage.googleapis.com/my-gcs-bucket                                          severity=CRITICAL

List sinks in a folder:

gcloud logging sinks list --folder=FOLDER_ID

NAME         DESTINATION                               FILTER
folder-logs  storage.googleapis.com/my-folder-bucket   logName:activity

List sinks in an organization:

gcloud logging sinks list --organization=ORGANIZATION_ID

NAME               DESTINATION                            FILTER
organization-logs  storage.googleapis.com/my-org-bucket   logName:activity

Describe sinks in the current project test-sink-v4:

gcloud logging sinks describe test-sink-v4

Output:

destination: storage.googleapis.com/my-gcs-bucket
filter: severity=CRITICAL
name: test-sink-v4
outputVersionFormat: V2
writerIdentity: serviceAccount:test-sink-v4@logging-PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com

Describe sinks in a folder:

gcloud logging sinks describe test-sink-v4 --folder=FOLDER_ID

Output:

destination: storage.googleapis.com/my-gcs-bucket
filter: severity=CRITICAL
name: test-sink-v4

Describe sinks in an organization:

gcloud logging sinks describe test-sink-v4 --organization=ORGANIZATION_ID

Output:

createTime: [TIMESTAMP]
description: Test Sink
destination: storage.googleapis.com/my-gcs-bucket
filter: severity=CRITICAL
name: test-sink-v4
updateTime: [TIMESTAMP]
writerIdentity: serviceAccount:test-sink-v4@logging-PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com

Updating sinks

Use the gcloud logging sinks update command, corresponding to the API method projects.sink.update:

You can update a sink to change the destination or the query:

gcloud logging sinks update SINK_NAME NEW_DESTINATION  --log-filter=NEW_FILTER

You can omit the NEW_DESTINATION or --log-filter if those parts don't change.

Examples

Update the destination of a project sink:

gcloud logging sinks update PROJECT_ID storage.googleapis.com/my-second-gcs-bucket

Deleting sinks

Use the gcloud logging sinks delete command, corresponding to the API method projects.sinks.delete: You stop routing its log entries when you delete a sink:

gcloud logging sinks delete SINK_NAME

Examples

Delete sink syslog-sink-1 in the current project:

gcloud logging sinks delete syslog-sink-1

Log-based metrics

To manage log-based metrics, use the gcloud logging metrics command group, corresponding to the API methods at projects.metrics.

Log-based metrics are located only in projects.

Creating basic metrics

Use the gcloud logging metrics create command, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.create:

gcloud logging metrics create METRIC_NAME  --description=... --log-filter=...

For more complex counter metrics with labels, use the create command as described in the section Creating advanced metrics.

Examples

Create a log-based metric that counts the number of log entries with severity of at least ERROR from Compute Engine instances:

gcloud logging metrics create error_count \
    --description="Syslog error counts." \
    --log-filter="resource.type=gce_instance AND severity>=ERROR"

Creating advanced metrics

To create complex metrics with labels, including distribution metrics, use the gcloud logging metrics create command, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.create:

gcloud logging metrics create METRIC_NAME  --config-from-file=FILE_NAME

FILE_NAME is the path to a file containing a YAML (or JSON) specification of a LogMetric object.

Examples

Create a distribution metric to record request latencies:

gcloud logging metrics create my-distribution-metric --config-from-file=logmetric.dat

where logmetric.dat contains the following:

bucketOptions:
  exponentialBuckets:
    growthFactor: 2.0
    numFiniteBuckets: 64
    scale: 0.01
description: App Engine Request Latency
filter: |
  resource.type="gae_app"
  logName="projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/appengine.googleapis.com%2Fnginx.request"
labelExtractors:
  path: EXTRACT(httpRequest.requestUrl)
metricDescriptor:
  labels:
  - description: HTTP Path
    key: path
  metricKind: DELTA
  name: projects/PROJECT_ID/metricDescriptors/logging.googleapis.com/user/my-distribution-metric
  type: logging.googleapis.com/user/my-distribution-metric
  valueType: DISTRIBUTION
name: my-distribution-metric
valueExtractor: EXTRACT(jsonPayload.latencySeconds)

Result:

Created [my-distribution-metric].

Updating metrics

Use gcloud logging metrics update, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.update:

gcloud logging metrics update METRIC_NAME ...

To change the query, use --log-filter. To change the description, use --description. To change more items, use --config-from-file.

Examples

Change the query in my-distribution-metric:

gcloud logging metrics update my-distribution-metric --log-filter="[NEW_LOG_FILTER]"

Listing and describing metrics

Use gcloud logging metrics list, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.list, and gcloud logging metrics describe, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.get:

gcloud logging metrics list ...
gcloud logging metrics describe METRIC_NAME

The metrics list command by defaults shows the full description of every listed metric. Use the --format flag to control how much information is listed.

Examples

List the distribution-type logging metrics in the current project. Show only the metric name and its description:

gcloud logging metrics list --filter="metricDescriptor.valueType=DISTRIBUTION" --format="table(name,description)"

Result:

NAME                       DESCRIPTION
myapp/request_latency      Request latency for myapp
bigquery_billed_bytes      Billed Bytes
food_latency               How long does it take to service all food requests
healthz_latencies          /healthz latencies in microseconds
latency_on_food            Tracking latency on food requests
lines_written
my_latency_metric
no-match-dist-metric
pizza_latency              How long does it take to service pizza requests?

Describe a user-defined distribution metric named myapp/request_latency. Show the information in the default YAML format:

gcloud logging metrics describe "myapp/request_latency"

Result:

bucketOptions:
  exponentialBuckets:
    growthFactor: 2.0
    numFiniteBuckets: 64
    scale: 0.01
description: Request latency for myapp
filter: |
  resource.type="gae_app"
  logName="projects/[PROJECT_ID]/logs/appengine.googleapis.com%2Fnginx.request"
labelExtractors:
  path: EXTRACT(httpRequest.requestUrl)
metricDescriptor:
  description: Request latency for myapp
  labels:
  - description: HTTP Path
    key: path
  metricKind: DELTA
  name: projects/[PROJECT_ID]/metricDescriptors/logging.googleapis.com/user/myapp/request_latency
  type: logging.googleapis.com/user/myapp/request_latency
  valueType: DISTRIBUTION
name: myapp/request_latency
valueExtractor: EXTRACT(jsonPayload.latencySeconds)

Deleting metrics

Use the gcloud logging metrics delete command, corresponding to the API method projects.metrics.delete:

gcloud logging metrics delete METRIC_NAME

Examples

Delete the metric my-distribution-metric from the current project:

gcloud logging metrics delete "my-distribution-metric"

Result:

Really delete metric [my-distribution-metric]?
Do you want to continue (Y/n)?  Y
Deleted [my-distribution-metric].