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Logging settings in Kibana

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IMPORTANT: This documentation is no longer updated. Refer to Elastic's version policy and the latest documentation.

Logging settings in Kibana

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Kibana relies on three high-level entities to set the logging service: appenders, loggers, and root.

Appenders define where log messages are displayed (stdout or console) and their layout (pattern or json). They also allow you to specify if you want the logs stored and, if so, where (file on the disk).
Loggers define what logging settings, such as the level of verbosity and the appenders, to apply to a particular context. Each log entry context provides information about the service or plugin that emits it and any of its sub-parts, for example, metrics.ops or elasticsearch.query.
Root is a logger that applies to all the log entries in Kibana.

Refer to the examples for common configuration use cases. To learn more about possible configuration values, go to Kibana’s Logging service.

Backwards compatibility

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Compatibility with the legacy logging system is assured until the end of the v7 version. All log messages handled by root context (default) are forwarded to the legacy logging service. The logging configuration is validated against the predefined schema and if there are any issues with it, Kibana will fail to start with the detailed error message.

When you switch to the new logging configuration, you will start seeing duplicate log entries in both formats. These will be removed when the default appender is no longer required.

Examples

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Here are some configuration examples for the most common logging use cases:

Log to a file

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Log the default log format to a file instead of to stdout (the default).

logging:
  appenders:
    file:
      type: file
      fileName: /var/log/kibana.log
      layout:
        type: pattern
  root:
    appenders: [default, file]

Log in JSON format

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Log the default log format to JSON layout instead of pattern (the default). With json layout, log messages will be formatted as JSON strings in ECS format that includes a timestamp, log level, logger, message text and any other metadata that may be associated with the log message itself.

logging:
  appenders:
    json-layout:
      type: console
      layout:
        type: json
  root:
    appenders: [default, json-layout]

Log with meta to stdout

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Include %meta in your pattern layout:

logging:
  appenders:
    console-meta:
      type: console
      layout:
        type: pattern
        pattern: "[%date] [%level] [%logger] [%meta] %message"
  root:
    appenders: [default, console-meta]

Log Elasticsearch queries

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logging:
  appenders:
    console_appender:
      type: console
      layout:
        type: pattern
        highlight: true
  root:
    appenders: [default, console_appender]
    level: warn
  loggers:
    - name: elasticsearch.query
      level: debug

Change overall log level

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logging:
  root:
    level: debug

Customize specific log records

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Here is a detailed configuration example that can be used to configure loggers, appenders and layouts:

logging:
  appenders:
    console:
      type: console
      layout:
        type: pattern
        highlight: true
    file:
      type: file
      fileName: /var/log/kibana.log
    custom:
      type: console
      layout:
        type: pattern
        pattern: "[%date][%level] %message"
    json-file-appender:
      type: file
      fileName: /var/log/kibana-json.log
      layout:
        type: json

  root:
    appenders: [default, console, file]
    level: error

  loggers:
    - name: plugins
      appenders: [custom]
      level: warn
    - name: plugins.myPlugin
      level: info
    - name: server
      level: fatal
    - name: optimize
      appenders: [console]
    - name: telemetry
      appenders: [json-file-appender]
      level: all
    - name: metrics.ops
      appenders: [console]
      level: debug

Here is what we get with the config above:

Context name	Appenders	Level
root	console, file	error
plugins	custom	warn
plugins.myPlugin	custom	info
server	console, file	fatal
optimize	console	error
telemetry	json-file-appender	all
metrics.ops	console	debug

If you modify root.appenders, make sure to include default.

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