A Docker log note should include container, time range, command, exit code, and restart state

A Docker log note should include container name, timestamp range, command, exit code, and restart state. The raw log lines are often not enough because container behavior depends on how the process was started, whether it exited cleanly, whether a restart policy ran it again, and whether the observed lines came from the relevant time window.

Docker documents the container logs command and notes that it returns logs present at the time of execution. That detail matters when a service keeps writing new lines or restarts quickly. A pasted tail can miss the first crash line, and a long log dump can hide the exact transition from healthy startup to failure.

A useful note records the command used to fetch logs, such as whether timestamps, since, until, tail, or follow were used. It should also include the container id or name, image tag, creation time, last start time, exit code, restart count, exposed ports, mounted config files, and the first error line after startup. If the issue is request-specific, include the request timestamp so the log window can be narrowed.

The note should separate process failure from application failure. A container can be running while the app returns 500s, or it can repeatedly restart before health checks ever pass. Naming that state early prevents the wrong investigation path.

A Docker log note should include container, time range, command, exit code, and restart state

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