A level that is too high just buries you
The Logs page lets you switch the recording level, from errors only up to a line for every request. Information level is the right place to leave it day to day. The screen stays readable and real failures still show up.
Move to debug only while you are actively investigating. At that level every name resolution and every rule match gets written down, which is what you want, but it scrolls fast. Put it back afterwards.
Debug level records the domains you visit
That is private. Drop back to information as soon as you are done, and clear the log if it matters.
Clear it, reproduce it, read what is left
- 1
Press clear first
Sitting on the Logs page and waiting achieves nothing. A few thousand lines scroll past and the one you needed is long gone. Empty the view before you touch anything else.
- 2
Do only the one thing that breaks
Reload the page that will not open, or click update on the subscription once. Do not open something else while you are at it, because traffic from other applications lands in the same log and undoes the clearing.
- 3
Read the few dozen lines that appeared
What accumulated after the clear is very close to the answer. Read from the oldest entry downward. The first error is usually the cause and the ones after it are consequences.
What each kind of entry points at
A dial failure or connection timeout means the client already chose a node and could not establish a connection to it, so look at the node or at your local network. A resolve failure points at DNS instead and has nothing to do with the node. Rule match entries name the policy a request was assigned to, which is the most direct evidence you can get that a custom rule works. Config errors such as a YAML parse failure or a rule provider that did not download show up at startup, so read those first whenever the program refuses to come up.
- The timestamp on the error lines up with the moment you acted; something from half an hour ago is a different story
- Repeating the same action produces the same error, which is what makes it reproducible
- When you ask for help you post a few lines either side of the failure, your exact steps, and whether TUN was on
Common questions
The Logs page is completely blank. Is it broken?
Usually not. The page only shows what happened after you opened it and does not backfill, and at the errors only level a healthy session genuinely produces nothing. Switch to information, visit a site, and watch the lines appear.
The log scrolls too fast to read anything. What can I do?
Drop the level from debug to information, which removes most of the volume. Combine that with clearing before you reproduce, so the whole event is one click wide. If you need to keep evidence, open the log file in the config directory and search it in an editor instead of chasing lines on screen.