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The original was posted on /r/selfhosted by /u/hhftechtips on 2025-07-30 08:01:27+00:00.
Many of us here rely on Traefik for our setups. It's a powerful and flexible reverse proxy that has simplified how we manage and expose our services. Whether you are a seasoned homelabber or just starting, you have likely appreciated its dynamic configuration and seamless integration with containerized environments.
However, as our setups grow, so does the volume of traffic and the complexity of our logs. While Traefik's built-in dashboard provides an excellent overview of your routers and services, it doesn't offer a real-time, granular view of the access logs themselves. For many of us, this means resorting to docker logs -f traefik and trying to decipher a stream of text, which can be less than ideal when you're trying to troubleshoot an issue or get a quick pulse on what's happening.
This is where a dedicated lightweight log dashboard can make a world of difference. Today, I want to introduce a tool that i believe it can benefit many us: the Traefik Log Dashboard.
What is the Traefik Log Dashboard?
The Traefik Log Dashboard is a simple yet effective tool that provides a clean, web-based interface for your Traefik access logs. It's designed to do one thing and do it well: give you a real-time, easy-to-read view of your traffic. It consists of a backend that tails your Traefik access log file and a frontend that displays the data in a user-friendly format.
Here's what it offers:
- Real-time Log Streaming: See requests as they happen, without needing to refresh or tail logs in your terminal.
- Clear and Organized Interface: The dashboard presents logs in a structured table, making it easy to see key information like status codes, request methods, paths, and response times.
- Geographical Information: It can display the country of origin for each request, which can be useful for identifying traffic patterns or potential security concerns.
- Filtering and Searching: You can filter logs by status code, method, or search for specific requests, which is incredibly helpful for debugging.
- Minimal Resource Footprint: It's a lightweight application that won't bog down your server.
Why is this particularly useful for Pangolin users?
For those of you who have adopted the Pangolin stack, you're already leveraging a setup that combines the Traefik with WireGuard tunnels. Pangolin is a fantastic self-hosted alternative to services like Cloudflare Tunnels.
Given that Pangolin uses Traefik as its reverse proxy, reading logs was a mess. While Pangolin provides excellent authentication and tunneling capabilities, having a dedicated log dashboard can provide an insight into the traffic that's passing through your tunnels. It can help you:
- Monitor the health of your services: Quickly see if any of your applications are throwing a high number of 5xx errors.
- Identify unusual traffic patterns: A sudden spike in 404 errors or requests from a specific region can be an early indicator of a problem or a security probe. (
- Debug access issues: If a user is reporting problems accessing a service, you can easily filter for their IP address and see the full request/response cycle.
How to get started
Integrating the Traefik Log Dashboard into your setup is straightforward, especially if you're already using Docker Compose. Here’s a general overview of the steps involved:
1. Enable JSON Logging in Traefik:
The dashboard's backend requires Traefik's access logs to be in JSON format. This is a simple change to your traefik.yml or your static configuration:
accessLog:
filePath: "/var/log/traefik/access.log"
format: json
This tells Traefik to write its access logs to a specific file in a structured format that the dashboard can easily parse.
2. Add the Dashboard Services to your docker-compose.yml**:**
Next, you'll add two new services to your existing docker-compose.yml file: one for the backend and one for the frontend. Here’s a snippet of what that might look like:
backend:
image: ghcr.io/hhftechnology/traefik-log-dashboard-backend:1.0.2
container_name: log-dashboard-backend
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- ./config/traefik/logs:/logs:ro
environment:
- NODE_ENV=production
- TRAEFIK_LOG_FILE=/logs/access.log
frontend:
image: ghcr.io/hhftechnology/traefik-log-dashboard-frontend:1.0.2
container_name: log-dashboard-frontend
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "3000:80"
depends_on:
- backend
A few things to note here:
- The backend service mounts the directory where your Traefik access logs are stored. It's mounted as read-only (
:ro) because the backend only needs to read the logs. - The
TRAEFIK_LOG_FILEenvironment variable tells the backend where to find the log file inside the container. - The frontend service exposes the dashboard on port 3000 of your host machine.
Once you've added these services, a simple docker compose up -d will bring the dashboard online.
RoadMap- Tie Routes with resources in pangolin to have a better insight. (done v1.0.2)
A note on security:
As with any tool that provides insight into your infrastructure, it's a good practice to secure access to the dashboard. You can easily do this by putting it behind your Traefik instance and adding an authentication middleware, such as Authelia, TinyAuth, or even just basic auth. This is a standard practice, and it's a great way to ensure that only you can see your traffic logs. Use Middleware manager
In conclusion
For both general Traefik users and those who have embraced the Pangolin stack, the Traefik Log Dashboard is a valuable addition to your observability toolkit. It provides a simple, clean, and effective way to visualize your access logs in real-time, making it easier to monitor your services, troubleshoot issues, and gain a better understanding of your traffic.
If you've been looking for a more user-friendly way to keep an eye on your Traefik logs, I highly recommend giving this a try. It's a small change to your setup that can provide a big improvement in your day-to-day operations.
