# Trace logs in ES **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [January 4, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/trace-logs-in-es/70620 "2017-01-04T23:32:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chunji08](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@chunji08](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/chunji08)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 11:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/trace-logs-in-es/70620/1 "2017-01-04T23:32:53Z")
Hi there, My current LogStash project is trying to have all the submitted jobs indexed in ES, and if there was a job with some failure, we should return back the immediate cause of the failure. At this moment, I have these 2 questions now if someone can help. 1. Given a log file, if we know the key message in a log file, sometimes, I may also need to get the before/after lines of that key part. Something as if I was running this unix command "grep -B5 -A5 server.log". So Is there a way we could have the similar mechanism in ES ? 2. Some of our log file does not give the root cause of failure, but contains the message as " check further details in a different log file ... ". For something like this, what would be the better way to trace the root cause ? Thanks, Chun ---
**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/trace-logs-in-es/70620/2 "2017-01-05T00:11:08Z")
1. Nope. 2. That's more a user oriented problem. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2017, 12:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/trace-logs-in-es/70620/3 "2017-02-02T00:11:12Z")
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