Logs and diagnostics

Updated Aug 8, 2026

Logs & Diagnostics under System is the first place to look when the host itself is the problem, rather than a machine on it.

Agent logs

The page shows Virtainer Lite’s own log, filterable by level and viewable in local time or UTC. Most questions about what the host did and when are answered here.

If you are already on the host over SSH, the same log is available from the journal:

journalctl -u virtainer-lite -f

Disk health

Storage devices report their health, including early warning when a disk starts to degrade. Check this after any unexpected reboot, and before you plan a storage change. The Storage page shows the same information alongside the pool.

Capacity

The Dashboard reports what the host has and what is committed to machines. It is the quickest check when creation fails for reasons that turn out to be simply running out of room.

Diagnostic reports

A diagnostic report bundles the host’s current state for support. Generate it here when you are asked for one.

Reading a failure

Errors from the host carry a stable code as well as a message, and a few of them point somewhere other than where they seem to:

What you see	Where the problem actually is
An upstream service is unavailable	The host’s own outbound network or DNS, not its storage or VM networking
A storage probe failed	Reading the disks failed. This is different from finding no disks
The operation does not match the current state	The machine is not in a state that allows the action, such as snapshotting a machine that is not running
A plan is stale	The disks changed after you reviewed the plan. Review again

The console shows the code alongside the message, so quote both when you report a problem.

Machines that look wrong

For machines that came back in an unexpected state after a restart, see After a host reboot.