kl

README

kl

An interactive Kubernetes log viewer for your terminal.

• View logs across multiple containers, pods, namespaces, and clusters
• Select containers interactively or auto-select by pattern matching against names, labels, and more
• See cluster changes in real time
• Navigate logs from multiple containers interleaved by timestamp
• Search logs by exact string or regex pattern. Show or hide surrounding context
• Zoom in and flip through single formatted logs one by one
• Archive and share: save logs to a local file or copy a log to your clipboard

Comparable to:

• kubectl logs supercharged
• k9s but specializing in logs
• stern & kail but multi-cluster and with an interactive interface

Usage

Install and run kl in a terminal. See kl --help for all options.

Examples:

# Use the current kubernetes context, defaulting to `default`
kl

# Use context `my-context`, all namespaces
kl --context my-context -A

# Use contexts `my-context` & `other-context`, namespaces `default` & `other-ns` in each context
kl --context my-context,other-context -n default,other-ns

# Auto-select containers with a pod owner (e.g. deployment) containing the word `nginx`
kl --mown nginx

# Auto-select containers with the exact name `my-container`, limited to 10 containers
kl --mc "^my-container$" --limit 10

# Auto-select containers that have labels app=flask and either tier=stage or tier=prod
kl -l 'app=flask,tier in (stage, prod)'

# Ignore containers with the exact name of `my-sidecar`
kl --ic "^my-sidecar$"

# Start focused on logs, ordered by timestamp descending, showing logs from 10 minutes ago onwards
kl --mc "^my-container$" -d --logs-view --since 10m

Press ? in any view to see keyboard shortcuts specific to the current view and across the application.

Key	Action
↓/j	down one line
↑/k	up one line
d	down half page
u	up half page
f	down full page
b	up full page
g	go to top (will follow logs if descending)
G	go to bottom (will follow logs if ascending)
l	focus on logs view
L	focus on logs view in fullscreen
enter	zoom in to single log view for selected log
shift+	scroll on single log view
esc	back to all logs view when viewing single log
s	focus on container selection view
S	focus on container selection view in fullscreen
F	toggle fullscreen
/	edit exact match filter
r	edit regex filter
enter	when filtering, apply filter
esc	discard applied filter
n	next filter match
N	previous filter match
x	toggle showing only the logs matching filter
w	toggle line wrap
←/→/h/l	pan left/right when not wrapped
o	reverse timestamp ordering
p	pause/resume log stream
t	change timestamp format
c	change container name format
0-9	change time from which logs begin
ctrl+s	save focused view to local file
ctrl+y	in single log view, copy to clipboard
?	show/hide help

Installation

The following installation options are available:

# homebrew
brew install robinovitch61/tap/kl

# upgrade using homebrew
brew update && brew upgrade kl

# nix-shell
# ensure NUR is accessible (https://github.com/nix-community/NUR)
nix-shell -p nur.repos.robinovitch61.kl

# nix flakes
# ensure flake support is enabled (https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes#Enable_flakes_temporarily)
nix run github:robinovitch61/nur-packages#kl

# arch linux
# PKGBUILD available at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kl-bin
yay -S kl-bin

# with go (https://go.dev/doc/install)
go install github.com/robinovitch61/kl@latest

# windows with winget
winget install robinovitch61.kl

# windows with scoop
scoop bucket add robinovitch61 https://github.com/robinovitch61/scoop-bucket
scoop install kl

# windows with chocolatey
choco install kl

You can also download prebuilt releases and move the unpacked binary to somewhere in your PATH.

Development

kl is written with tools from Charm.

Feature requests and bug reports are welcome.

Running the app with the environment variable KL_DEBUG=1 will create or append to a kl.log file in your current directory with debug logs.

To manually build the project:

git clone git@github.com:robinovitch61/kl.git
cd kl
go build  # outputs ./kl executable

Run an example flask + postgres + nginx setup in a local k3d cluster for testing locally:

k3d cluster create test
k3d cluster create test2
kubectl --context k3d-test apply -f ./dev/deploy.yaml
kubectl --context k3d-test2 create namespace otherns
kubectl --context k3d-test2 apply -f ./dev/deploy.yaml -n otherns

# view both clusters and all namespaces in kl
kl --context k3d-test,k3d-test2 -A

# access the application's webpage
kubectl --context k3d-test2 -n otherns port-forward services/frontend-service 8080:80
open http://localhost:8080

# browser console one-liner to click button every second to generate logs
setInterval(() => { document.getElementsByTagName("button")[0].click(); }, 1000);

# or make requests directly to flask from the terminal
kubectl --context k3d-test2 port-forward services/flask-service 5000:5000
curl http://localhost:5000/status

Manually Specify the kl Version at Build Time

If necessary, you can manually specify the output of kl --version at build time as follows:

go build -ldflags "-X github.com/robinovitch61/kl/cmd.Version=vX.Y.Z"

In this case, you're responsible for ensuring the specified version matches what is being built.