Get started with Rootprint in under five minutes

This guide walks you through deploying Rootprint locally, signing in, and sending your first logs. The whole process takes about five minutes and requires only Docker.

Install Rootprint

Follow the Docker Compose installation guide to start Rootprint. The quickest option is:

curl -o docker-compose.yml https://docs.rootprint.io/files/docker-compose.full.yaml
docker compose up -d

Create the admin account

Open http://localhost:8282 in your browser. On first boot, Rootprint redirects you to the setup wizard. Enter your desired admin credentials and submit the form.

Create an ingest API key

Rootprint requires a bearer API key to accept log data. To create one:

In the sidebar, open Settings → API keys.
Click Create ingest key, give it a name, and pick the bundled otel-logs-v0_9 index.
The value is shown once on creation. Copy it before clicking Done. You can re-reveal it later with the eye icon on the key’s row.

You will use this API key in the next step to authenticate your log shipper.

Send sample logs

Set TOKEN to the API key you just copied, then use curl to post a couple of NDJSON log entries to the bundled otel-logs-v0_9 index:

export TOKEN='<your-ingest-token>'
curl -X POST 'http://localhost:8282/api/ingest/ndjson' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/x-ndjson' \
  --data-binary @- <<EOF
{"timestamp_nanos":$(date +%s)000000000,"severity_text":"INFO","body":{"message":"User logged in"},"service_name":"frontend","attributes":{"user_id":"alice"},"resource_attributes":{},"trace_id":"","span_id":"","trace_flags":0,"observed_timestamp_nanos":$(date +%s)000000000,"severity_number":9,"dropped_attributes_count":0,"resource_dropped_attributes_count":0,"scope_name":"","scope_version":"","scope_attributes":{},"scope_dropped_attributes_count":0}
{"timestamp_nanos":$(date +%s)000000000,"severity_text":"ERROR","body":{"message":"Connection timeout"},"service_name":"api-gateway","attributes":{},"resource_attributes":{},"trace_id":"","span_id":"","trace_flags":0,"observed_timestamp_nanos":$(date +%s)000000000,"severity_number":17,"dropped_attributes_count":0,"resource_dropped_attributes_count":0,"scope_name":"","scope_version":"","scope_attributes":{},"scope_dropped_attributes_count":0}
EOF

Search your logs

Go back to http://localhost:8282 and select the otel-logs-v0_9 index. The two log entries you sent appear in the results. Try filtering by severity_text:ERROR to see only the error entry.

Next steps

Read the Send Logs guide to understand the OpenTelemetry path and the authenticated HTTP endpoint.
Learn the search query syntax to filter your logs precisely.
Set up Google OAuth to let your team sign in with their company Google accounts.

Send logsPick the right ingestion path: OTLP for anything OpenTelemetry, the HTTP endpoint for custom-schema indexes.

​Next steps

Next steps