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Read a machine’s logs when it does not boot, is unreachable, or failed to start or resume. Tag machines with labels to find them again.

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Read a machine’s logs

instabox logs prints a machine’s console log and its last 20 operations (create, start, stop, pause, and resume, with their errors). Reading the log works in every state and never wakes the machine.
The console log is the serial console: kernel and systemd boot messages, anything written to /dev/console, and errors from the VM monitor. The host keeps the last 8 MiB across stops, pauses, and restarts. A command’s own output is kept with its background job. To read the full guest journal, run journalctl over exec.
GET /v1/machines/{id}/logs?tail=N (scope machines:read) returns console, cursor, state and operations (oldest first). To follow it, pass cursor as after on the next request to get only newer output. When the console cannot be read, for example because the machine’s disks are in storage, the response is still 200, with consoleUnavailable and the operations.

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Labels

Give a machine up to 32 key=value labels (metadata in the API), then filter by them.
With several --meta flags, a machine must match all of them. The server filters, and lists only your own orgs’ machines. An agent can tag every machine it creates with --meta session=ID and find them later with instabox ls --meta session=ID.
Labels are stored in plain text. Use them for labels, not secrets.
The key and value limits are under metadata in Create parameters.