GitHub Actions: "failed to get run log: HTTP 410: Server Error"
"Server Error" is misleading here: nothing is broken. HTTP 410 means Gone. The run is older than the repository's log retention, 90 days unless someone changed it, and GitHub has deleted its logs. They cannot be brought back; the run itself, its result and its jobs are still there.
What GitHub answered
On October 28, 2026, with a token, for runs of the public repository cli/cli. A run from May 3, 2026, with the GitHub CLI 2.96.0:
gh run view 25293826329 -R cli/cli --log failed to get run log: HTTP 410: Server Error (https://api.github.com/repos/cli/cli/actions/runs/25293826329/logs)
--log-failed and --job <id> --log stopped with the same line. The REST API, for the whole run's logs and for one job's log:
GET /repos/cli/cli/actions/runs/25293826329/logs
GET /repos/cli/cli/actions/jobs/74149451262/logs
HTTP 410 Gone
{"message":"Server Error","documentation_url":"https://docs.github.com/rest/actions/workflow-jobs#download-job-logs-for-a-workflow-run","status":"410"}
The edge is the 90 days: a job from July 27 (93 days before) answered 410, a job from August 2 (87 days before) still handed out its log.
What is still there
- The run:
gh run view 25293826329 -R cli/clistill showed the result, the trigger, the jobs with their results and times, and the annotations. - The jobs, with their status and conclusion. Not their steps: the job from May (
GET /repos/cli/cli/actions/jobs/74149451262) came back with"steps": [], and so did the one from July 27; the job from August 2 still had its 3 steps. So an old run's jobs show no steps on GitHub's API either.
GitHub's documentation says that from October 1, 2026 the same retention also covers checks, workflow runs and commit statuses. On October 28 the run from May was still listed; only its logs and steps were gone.
Where the retention is set
On GitHub, the repository's Settings | Actions | General, under "Check, workflow run, status, artifact and log retention". GitHub's documentation (Managing GitHub Actions settings for a repository): 90 days by default; 1 to 90 days for a public repository, 1 to 400 days for a private one; an organization or enterprise can set the limit for its repositories. A change applies only to new logs, not to the ones that exist.
So a log you will need later (a release build, an audit) has to be saved while it exists: download it from the run's page, or with gh run view <run-id> --log > run.log, or upload what matters as an artifact with its own retention-days.
Read GitHub Actions logs in IntelliJ IDEA
Pipeline Inbox for GitHub Actions Workflows, a plugin by Lesstep for JetBrains IDEs 2024.1 or later, lists the runs of all your repositories in an IDE tool window, with their jobs, steps and logs, with error lines marked; double-click a step to open the log where it starts. From version 1.0.14, the log of a job past the retention no longer shows "GitHub returned HTTP 410": the log tab says that GitHub has deleted the log, and the job's steps with it, and links the job on GitHub. Reading is free; re-running, cancelling, running workflows and reviewing deployments are Pro (US$1.50 a month, with a 30-day trial).
GitHub and GitHub Actions are trademarks of GitHub, Inc.; IntelliJ IDEA is a trademark of JetBrains s.r.o. This page is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by GitHub, Inc. or JetBrains.
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