# Balena System Logs collection - journalctl & dmesg

**URL:** <https://forums.balena.io/t/balena-system-logs-collection-journalctl-dmesg/337418>\
**Category:** balenaOS\
**Created:** [July 8, 2021, 4:54pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balena-system-logs-collection-journalctl-dmesg/337418 "2021-07-08T16:54:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eeb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/65b543/32.png) [@eeb](https://forums.balena.io/u/eeb)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2021, 4:54pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balena-system-logs-collection-journalctl-dmesg/337418/1 "2021-07-08T16:54:21Z")

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Hi,

We are looking to collect OS data from our devices on the fleet so we can better troubleshoot and understand failures.

Some of the tools used for this are `journalctl` and `dmesg`. Is there a way to collect them either using Balena tools like CLI or SDK, or using the containers interaction with Supervisor, or any other approach?

Regards,

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ab77](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/ab77/32/2870_2.png) [@ab77](https://forums.balena.io/u/ab77)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2021, 6:18pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balena-system-logs-collection-journalctl-dmesg/337418/2 "2021-07-08T18:18:43Z")

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Hello, you can currently use the [API](https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/api/overview/) (or the SDKs) to get device state/status, plus CPU, memory and disk numbers. Beyond that, you would need to deploy a container into your app to specifically collect metrics/logs of interest and store/forward them somewhere for analysis (i.e. Splunk, DataDog, etc.). Open source solutions like Prometheus is also a good option and we have some existing [projects](https://github.com/balenalabs-incubator/balena-prometheus-grafana) that you can use for inspiration.