Console

Every machine is equipped with a serial console which allows interactive access to the guest, e.g. via the Exec endpoint of the IRI MachineRuntime service.

Console log

The console output of a machine is additionally mirrored to a log file on the hypervisor. This is an always-on feature and uses the libvirt <log> sub-element of the serial chardev, so the interactive console stays usable while all traffic is persisted.

The log file is stored per machine at:

<libvirt-provider-dir>/machines/<machine-uid>/logs/console.log

It is written with append="on", i.e. the content is preserved across domain restarts. This allows operators to inspect early boot logs (firmware, bootloader, kernel) of a machine, which is especially useful when a machine fails to boot.

The console log is removed together with the machine directory when the machine is deleted.