Disable logging for one container in Docker-Compose

Question

I have a web application launched using Docker compose that I want to disable all logging for (or at the very least print it out to syslog instead of a file).

When my web application works it can quickly generate an 11GB log file on startup so this eats up my disk space very fast.

I'm aware that normal docker has logging options for its run command but in Docker Compose I use

docker-compose up

in the application folder to start my application. How would I enable this functionality in my case? I'm not seeing a specific case anywhere online.

Answer 1

Note: As of Compose V2 (replacing V1 in April 2022) this answer will no longer work. V2+ should use the attach attribute in Nick Vee's answer or the ---no-attach flag similar to Kipr's answer.

You should be able to use logging feature. Try to set driver to none

logging:
    driver: none

Full example:

services:
  website:
    image: nginx
    logging:
      driver: none

In recent versions of docker-compose, if all of the services have disabled logging, docker-compose will act as in detach mode. To force the attached mode you can add a simple silent service like that:

services:
  website:
    image: nginx
    logging:
      driver: none

  force-attach:
    image: bash
    command: tail -f /dev/null