# Large log files generated by watchdog

**URL:** <https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [November 17, 2024, 10:40am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985 "2024-11-17T10:40:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2024, 10:40am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985/1 "2024-11-17T10:40:29Z")

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I’m new to Flox and am giving it a spin to check it out. Even with a trivial environment, I’m seeing very large log files created under .flox/log, with many entries per second of the form :

> 2024-11-17T10:16:59.357869Z DEBUG watchdog{socket=“/root/.cache/flox/run/flox.0cf2a520.sock” log\_dir=“/root/flox-test/.flox/log”}: flox\_watchdog::process: still watching PIDs {AttachedPid { pid: 18, expiration: None }}

Is this expected behaviour, and is there a way to suppress these debug log messages?

In case it’s relevant, I’m running in an Ubuntu OCI image with podman in WSL2.

Thanks!

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**Author:** ![brantley](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/brantley/32/602_2.png) [@brantley](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/brantley)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2024, 8:27pm UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985/2 "2024-11-17T20:27:56Z")

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Thanks for flagging the problem! It seems we left debugging enabled in the release - I can confirm I’m also seeing this on aarch64 darwin and logged [flox-watchdog is compute, storage-intensive · Issue #2383 · flox/flox · GitHub](https://github.com/flox/flox/issues/2383) to document the issue.

I took a quick look at the rust `tracing` crate documentation but couldn’t figure out if there was an environment variable or flag that could be used to reduce the default log level down from debug to warn or error, but you may find these two commands useful while we work to release a hotfix:

```auto
pkill -STOP flox-watchdog
pkill -CONT flox-watchdog

```

We’ll get back to you ASAP with an ETA for the fix on this. Again, many thanks for bringing it to our attention!

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**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 6:53am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985/3 "2024-11-19T06:53:55Z")

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That works. Thanks for the quick response!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![brantley](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/brantley/32/602_2.png) [@brantley](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/brantley)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2024, 12:55pm UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985/4 "2024-11-20T12:55:57Z")

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And … yesterday we released version 1.3.5 that includes a fix for this issue. If you [upgrade](https://flox.dev/), perform one final `pkill -CONT flox-watchdog`, then exit and restart all Flox environments then you shouldn’t have any further issues. Please let us know if you find otherwise!

Again, many thanks for the feedback!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![t0rx](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.flox.dev/t0rx/32/705_2.png) [@t0rx](https://discourse.flox.dev/u/t0rx)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2024, 7:23am UTC](https://discourse.flox.dev/t/large-log-files-generated-by-watchdog/985/5 "2024-11-21T07:23:21Z")

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This works great, thanks. And this version also works in my WSL2 environment rather than me having to run in a container, so double-win!