@feld If possible and easy to do, I would like split logs. Where syslog gets simplified messages that don't dump the whole error and object for federation issues (like pictured in your post) and only logs internal errors like process termination, timeouts etc. with the full error, to make the difference between files and syslog less confusing. And a log file that gets the full messages for debugging and more thorough monitoring.

It is sort of possible now with different log levels for syslog and console, but I don't know how hard it would be effectively sending two different messages through Elixir's logger.

Also it would be nice to put a status to success messages like {:fetch, :ok} instead of showing them only on errors (as pictured above).

EDIT: Looks like the error could be passed as metadata to the logging system instead of the current way of dumping it to the message. That way it can be easily formatted in the config (omitting the metadata in the syslog format and including it in the file log.)

As for logging to file, I don't know how hard it is in Elixir. There's a module for it in Hex, but I don't know what stance Pleroma has regarding 3rd party modules for stuff like this. Or completely sidestep the issue by logging to console and redirecting stdout to a file in a start script/service.