Mosquitto: log timestamp in readable format instead of seconds

[pstanton]

it is hard to debug issues when you constantly have to convert the timestamp to a readable format.

should be formatted with yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss+Z (java equiv) using os time zone.

[karlp]

Or, you should use syslog if you need/want customizations. long dates take up more already limited horizontal space. (I appreciate the idea, just putting out the opposites, for everyone who wants one way, others want the reverse)

[pstanton]

"Or, you should use syslog"

.. thanks for the suggestion, how do I get mosquitto logging to syslog with a timestamp?

[karlp]

That's (unfortunately) entirely dependent on what syslog daemon you're using, and how it's configured. But it's pretty much exactly what syslog is for. rsyslog and syslog-ng are both commonly available, you can probably make all sorts of timestamp formatting changes in plain old syslogd itself too.

[ralight]

In mosquitto.conf you could do:

log_dest syslog
log_facility 0
log_timestamp false

And then in your syslog daemon configure the local0 facility to log as you want. In rsyslog this would be something like

local0.* -/var/log/mosquitto.log

[ralight]

This hasn't seen any updates in a while, if you still think there is an issue here please reopen and add more information.

[PTS93]

I get the decision but wouldn't it be fairly easy and harmless to have a log_timeformat with maybe human and unix and have it default to unix if not defined?
Going via syslog is a solution but needs a fair bit of setup everytime you setup a broker, if it were an option I could just drop in my standard config an be done with it.

[pmioulet]

• in a docker context you might just want to run docker log and not redirect to syslog

[esteevens]

+1

[PTS93]

@ralight should we open a new issue? No one can re-open this issue other than contributors and the op.

[esteevens]

What is the point of having an option to add a timestamp in the logs that is only machine readable. For humans it is useless IMHO. Would a pull request make a chance of being approved?

[lyolic]

+1 for human-readable timestamps

[Olaf65]

tail -f /var/log/mosquitto/mosquitto.log | perl -pe 's/(\d+)/localtime($1)/e'

[tlvlp]

I just found out that this has been implemented in https://github.com/eclipse/mosquitto/commit/1a234323a3912fda3c1d90743d903beb737df862:

1. Update your version to 1.6+ (the currently latest official docker image 1.6.3 surely has this)
2. Add log_timestamp_format option to your mosquitto.conf:

log_dest file /mosquitto/log/mosquitto.log
log_timestamp true
log_timestamp_format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S

1. Restart the service and the new entries' time stamps will use the above defined format:

1561035855: mosquitto version 1.6.3 terminating
1561035855: Saving in-memory database to /mosquitto/data/mosquitto.db.
2019-06-20T15:04:22: mosquitto version 1.6.3 starting

[riker65]

Hi
I do have an error when using:

log_timestamp_format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S

Error: Unknown configuration variable "log_timestamp_format". Error found at /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf:16.

running: mosquitto is already the newest version (1.4.15-2ubuntu0.18.04.3).

[tlvlp]

running: mosquitto is already the newest version (1.4.15-2ubuntu0.18.04.3).

Hi @riker65 , I'm pretty sure that's not the newest version :) 1.4.x < 1.6.x

[Assar63]

@riker65
You need to add this source

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mosquitto-dev/mosquitto-ppa/ubuntu bionic main

It will give you this policy at the moment

mosquitto:
Installed: 1.6.3-0mosquitto1~bionic1
Candidate: 1.6.3-0mosquitto1~bionic1
Version table:
* 1.6.3-0mosquitto1~bionic1 500
500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/mosquitto-dev/mosquitto-ppa/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
1.4.15-2ubuntu0.18.04.3 500
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates/universe amd64 Packages
500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security/universe amd64 Packages
1.4.15-2 500
500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages