smolvm sandbox logs prints the host-side boot and console log for a sandbox. Reach for it when a sandbox is slow to become ready, when shell or ssh won’t connect, or when you want to see what the guest kernel and init printed on the serial console.
Synopsis
Arguments
string
required
Name or ID of the sandbox to read logs from.
Options
number
default:"200"
Number of lines to show from the end of the log.
flag
Keep printing new log lines as they arrive. Exit with
Ctrl+C.flag
Emit a JSON envelope with the log content in
data instead of streaming raw text.Examples
Show the last 200 lines
Show more history
Watch a boot live
Capture the log for a bug report
How it behaves
The command reads the boot/console log that SmolVM captures on the host, so it works even when the guest agent or SSH isn’t reachable.--follow streams appended bytes through an incremental UTF-8 decoder, so multi-byte characters that span a read boundary aren’t garbled, and the final line isn’t split when the log lacks a trailing newline. Piping into a reader that closes early (for example | head) exits cleanly.
Related commands
smolvm sandbox exec- Run a command in a sandbox from a scriptsmolvm sandbox shell- Open an interactive shell once the sandbox is upsmolvm doctor- Check whether the host can run SmolVM at all