this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Messed around and made a GUI for container logs and configs (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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We were kind of annoyed by how we weren't able to access our containers to see logs in an instant. Docker commands are fine, but you need to SSH into the server to be able to do it, and manually specify which container you'd like to check out.

To save some time, we made a tool and we named it darklens. You can use it to check your containers without using SSH keys, entering Docker commands ("oh, shoot, the container I was curious about had - and not _ in it, let's fix that typo and waste 4 more seconds") in the terminal, and trying to figure out container configs in unreadable JSON data.

Thought we'd like to show you this tool because it can be helpful for self-hosters and you can give valuable feedback on how we can improve it.

You can check it out on GitHub here:

- darklens on GitHub: https://github.com/dyrector-io/darklens

Have a nice weekend yall!

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just successfully tested this out. And unfortunately, sad to say, Portainer does the same thing as a higher level too. I absolutely see no purpose in using this app vs Portainer (which is also free).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the feedback! What do you think we can improve about darklens?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hmm, the only thing I found lacking from Portainer is probably the way logs are presented. It's all clumped together, although having lines is helpful, but sometimes it's still very messy.

Perhaps syntax highlighting for logs, and probably alternating background colors would have helped a lot.

But to be very honest, even if Darklens has that feature, I'd still prefer to use Portainer because I can spin up instances, manage and even execute directly into the docker container shell right from Portainer. Doesn't make sense to have another overhead on top of Portainer just for pretty logging.

Unless somehow Darklens is an app that does that one thing only. View logs in a pretty environment. Keeps the overhead small enough to actually make it worth it. And also, allow viewing the logs of the host machine, not just docker applications.