Reduce Log Level

[brando56894 6]

Is it possible to reduce the log level to warning or error? Info is far too verbose for normal usage since it constantly spits out the HTTP requests and makes reading through a log to find an error a nightmare, especially on a tablet since you have to scroll through literally thousands of lines of HTTP output to get to anything useful.

[Luke 42078]

can you give examples of what you don't think is useful? the http requests are extremely useful in order for us to be able to trace through sequences of activity. they are really essential in fact.

[brando56894 6]

I agree that they are essential when trying to debug an issue, but when I want to see why a file isn't playing I don't find it helpful to scroll through hours of previous HTTP requests to get to the error for the current time. For example, I use Emby as the back end for Kodi on my HTPC, a file isn't playing on Kodi but plays perfectly on Emby. In order to see if there is an error generated in Emby I literally have to scroll through hours of HTTP requests which takes a few minutes because there is no way to jump to the end of a file in Android so I have to manually scroll through thousands of lines and wait from Chrome to catch up because it lags like crazy when viewing a log, even on my Pixel C.

 

It would be nice if there was a way to lessen the verbosity of the log output to only display more "high level" errors, then once you know you can replicate the issue, increase the verbosity to see where the error lies. Currently I just find it more useful to stop Emby server, delete all of my logs, restart it then trigger the issue, since that way there are only a few hundred lines instead of thousands of lines. Also if I'm using something like the tail command to watch what happens when I try to play a file, the log is constant overrun with the damn requests and I can't see any real errors since it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

 

This is a common feature in many Linux apps that I use, and I was surprised to see that there was no way to lessen the output to reduce disk activity and increase readability, there is only debug info, which I would consider HTTP requests to be since it's telling you what is happening at a lower level. On a similar note, it doesn't really help when mono barfs up stack traces when something like ffmpeg can't verify/ extract thumbnails from a file, as it leads to a sort of false positive where the user thinks that there's something wrong with Emby itself when the file is the actual issue.

Edited January 5, 2017 by brando56894

[mastrmind11 722]

+1

[Latchmor 584]

It's easy enough to do a 'find' in chrome for the file name with the issue and it highlights them all and lets you jump to them. I hardly ever scroll through a large log looking for a particular line.

[brando56894 6]

That doesn't help when you can't even open the log because it's so huge. A log for the past 24 hours was 14 MB and kept hanging when I would try to open it on my Pixel C. Also I never can find actual file names, just IDs.

[brando56894 6]

@@Luke is this something that you're unwilling to implement? If you're not willing to do it for the logs, can you at least implement a filtering mechanism in the log view section of the GUI that will only show specific log levels?

[Luke 42078]

If there's adequate demand for further log settings then of course we'll take a look at it. thanks.

[GrahamH68 3]

+1 for the ability to reduce logging to Warning/Error.  Info is just too verbose to be useful most of the time.

[Luke 42078]

What info are you suggesting be reduced?

[osealion 0]

HTTP logging should not be logged by default.

It should be an option that is suppressed by the existing debug logging toggle.

Or add another toggle for network traffic monitoring.

 

[Luke 42078]

3 hours ago, osealion said:

HTTP logging should not be logged by default.

It should be an option that is suppressed by the existing debug logging toggle.

Or add another toggle for network traffic monitoring.

 

Yea i understand. If anything perhaps an option to disable. We really need that information in order to troubleshoot, and it can be very frustrating for users to report their problem with a log file, only to then be asked to do it again and create a new log file with more information. So that's why it is on by default.

[Turbofiero 5]

On 3/28/2021 at 8:42 PM, Luke said:

Yea i understand. If anything perhaps an option to disable. We really need that information in order to troubleshoot, and it can be very frustrating for users to report their problem with a log file, only to then be asked to do it again and create a new log file with more information. So that's why it is on by default.

I don't care to see "Info", just "Warn" and "Error", would surely be nice to be able to change this, sure have it on by default, but an option to set log level would be appreciated

[Luke 42078]

For what it's worth the amount of info logging will be reduced a little bit in the upcoming 4.7 server release.