Install Google Cloud Ops Agent to Log Docker

To install it

curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh --also-install

check if it’s running:

sudo systemctl status google-cloud-ops-agent*""

Next we should configure docker logs to go through Google Cloud Agent.

# What logging driver is Docker using?
docker info --format '{{.LoggingDriver}}'
 
# Where is Docker’s root dir on THIS host?
docker info --format '{{.DockerRootDir}}'

It should be json-file for our purpose.

You should then check this folder to see if logs are available:

sudo find "$(docker info --format '{{.DockerRootDir}}')" -type f -name '*-json.log' 2>/dev/null

Then Give some permissions:

# let others traverse the dir tree
sudo chmod o+X "$(docker info --format '{{.DockerRootDir}}')"
sudo chmod o+X "$(docker info --format '{{.DockerRootDir}}')/containers"

Create a file at /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml:

logging:
  receivers:
    docker_all:
      type: files
      include_paths:
        - /var/lib/docker/containers/*/*-json.log
      record_log_file_path: true   # adds file path as a label in Cloud Logging

  processors:
    docker_json:
      type: parse_json
      # optional: map Docker's "time" field to LogEntry.timestamp
      # time_key: time
      # time_format: "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%L%z"

  service:
    pipelines:
      docker_pipeline:
        receivers: [docker_all]
        processors: [docker_json]

Note that you should change included path to be the path of your installed docker logs folder.

Then restart google cloud ops agent:

sudo systemctl restart google-cloud-ops-agent
sudo systemctl status google-cloud-ops-agent

You should be done. Now go to GCP and VM Instances → Observability tab and you should see your logs.

Google Console Cloud - GCP