How to Clear Log Files of A Docker Container

This tutorial will help you clear the log file on a Docker container. If your system is getting out of disk space and you found that the docker container’s log files are consuming high disk space. you can find the log file location and clear them with the help of this tutorial. While clearing log files of a docker container, you don’t need to stop it.

Clear Docker Container Log File

Below are the 3 different options to clear log files of Docker containers. Choose any one of the below options to truncate the docker container log files.

Some of the below options require a container id or name, which can be found with the docker ps -a command.

• Option 1: In this option, first we will find the log file path and then truncate it. Use inspect option to find the log file name and location of a docker container.

  docker container inspect  --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>
  

  As a result, you will get a log file path. Now truncate the log file with the following command.

  truncate -s 0 /path/to/logfile 
  

  Here -s is used to set the size of a file. You provided 0 as input, which means completely truncating the log file.

• Option 2: You can combine both commands in a single command. Use the following command to truncate the log file of the specified Docker container.

  truncate -s 0 $(docker inspect --format='{{.LogPath}}' <container_name_or_id>) 
  

• Option 3: Truncate the log files of all docker containers in your system.

  truncate -s 0 /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log 
  

You can quickly truncate the docker log files using one of the above options.

Wrap Up

In this blog post, you have learned to truncate (clear) log files of a Docker container.