Logs

A Cloud app writes its logs on its own computer: open a terminal on the development or production computer and read them with journalctl. Each publish keeps its own build log in the Deployment window.

On this page

Ask the agent

Read this app's production logs and tell me why sign-up fails.

It reads the logs on the production or development computer and tells you what failed; what to change stays your call.

Do it yourself

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Read the app's logs

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  1. Open the project menu (☰ and the project name, at the top left), choose Terminal, then New PROD terminal for the published app or New DEV terminal for the preview.

  2. Show the last 200 lines of the backend:

    sudo journalctl -u playcode-backend -n 200 --no-pager
    
  3. Watch new lines as they arrive, then stop with Ctrl+C:

    sudo journalctl -u playcode-frontend -f
    
  4. Show the last 5 minutes of every app service:

    sudo journalctl -u 'playcode-*' --since '5 min ago'
    

Read the build log of a publish

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  1. Open Publish and choose View publish progress.
  2. Open Build details. When a publish fails, it opens by itself, under What went wrong.
  3. Choose Download log to save the whole log as a file.

If it doesn't work

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"Publish the project first to open a PROD terminal."

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The production computer exists only after the first publish. Publish the app, or read the development logs.

The log is empty or starts recently

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The computer restarted, and a restart clears the logs. A restore, a change of computer size and a restart all do this.

"No entries" for playcode-backend

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The project may run its services under other names. List them with systemctl list-units 'playcode-*', or ask the agent to find them.

"This run's log is no longer available."

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Playcode could not load the build log of that publish. Publish again to get a fresh log, or ask a person if the problem stays.

Limits

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  • A computer keeps its logs in memory, up to 32 MB. A restart clears them; sleep does not.
  • The development and production computers have separate logs.
  • A log holds whatever your code prints. Do not print secrets or customer data.
  • A static site has no server, so it has no server logs: its code runs in the visitor's browser.