Log Files
Information on the different log files Mycroft uses, where the logs files are located on a Mycroft Device, the sort of data that you will find in them, and some common commands to use to aid diagnosis
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Information on the different log files Mycroft uses, where the logs files are located on a Mycroft Device, the sort of data that you will find in them, and some common commands to use to aid diagnosis
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Was this helpful?
If you request Support from Mycroft, through the , through or by , it is likely we will ask you for logs to help us diagnose the problem.
The automatically generates links to log files - so if you prefer a less detailed approach, then please use the Support Skill.
The Mycroft logs each follow a standard format, being:
A timestamp
The function or action that was called
The level of the error, which can be one of:
DEBUG - incidental information used for debugging purposes
INFO - informational log entries which do not indicate an error
WARNING - an error occurred, but it did not stop execution of the Skill or process
ERROR - an error occurred, and it stopped execution of a Skill or other process
CRITICAL - a significant error occurred, and it halted execution of the Mycroft functionality itself
The logs on all Devices are held at /var/log/mycroft/.
To access the logs, you will need to ssh into the Device. You can find and on this site also.
To find what Mycroft logs are available, run the following Linux command:
ls -las /var/log/mycroft/
Example (from a Ubuntu Linux install):
This log contains information on actions such as:
When Mycroft loads audio services
When Mycroft speaks
When the Text to Speech (TTS) cache is hit
When volume is increased or decreased
This log contains information on actions such as:
Messages sent between Mycroft components such as Skills and the Enclosure that Mycroft is running on
Data generated through invoking and controlling Skills
Errors related to reading configuration files
This log contains information on actions such as:
Loading of configurations for the Enclosure
Altering properties of the Enclosure, such as the Eyes or Mouth on a Mark 1
Activities related to the Enclosure Display Manager
This log contains information on actions such as:
The outcome of Mycroft attempting to load Skills, such as whether a Skill was successfully loaded, blacklisted (disabled by Mycroft) or failed to load
When an Utterance is spoken, which Skill it was matched with, and the information provided to the Skill
Information related to the Mycroft Skill Manager (msm), including an msm-specific error code.
This log contains information on actions such as:
Registration and activation of Wake Words
Transcriptions from the Speech to Text (STT) service
When the Text to Speech (TTS) service was activated
To find the errors related to a particular Skill, use this command once you have created an ssh connection:
cat /var/log/mycroft/skills.log | grep -i error | grep -i SKILLNAME
where SKILLNAME is the name of the Skill.
tail -f /var/log/mycroft/skills.log
To stop tailing the log, press Ctrl + C.
On Picroft and Mark 1 Devices, log rotation is implemented using the logrotate utility. This means that log files are rotated every 24 hours to a new file. When a log file is rotated, it is given a name with a number suffix. Yesterday's log file is logname.log.1 and the day before yesterday's is named logname.log.2 and so on. This makes it easier to troubleshoot an error to the time or date that it occurred, and also ensures that disk space on the Device is not exhausted.
On Linux installations, log rotation is not implemented, so you may have to manually delete logs from time to time if they are taking up too much space.
If you accidentally delete your log files, they will be recreated the next time the Mycroft services are started.
Here is an example of a Mark 1's /var/log/mycroft directory, showing log rotation:
Some Enclosures, like the and will automatically try to update their software periodically. This log is the output of the update process, and has similar output to what you would see if you manually ran apt-get update. This includes the number of packages updated, which packages were removed, and which packages were held back.
Any errors associated with the Wake Word listener functionality
If you are , then we strongly recommend that you tail the skills.log log file as you are doing development work, so that you can easily observe any errors that your Skill is throwing. To do this, use this command: