This was originally added when we first added a `MemoryHandler` to the default
log config back in https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/8040, to ensure
that we didn't explode with an infinite loop if there was an error formatting
the logs.
Since then, we made additional improvements to logging which make this
workaround redundant. In particular:
* we no longer attempt to log un-UTF8-decodable byte sequences, which were the
most likely cause of an error in the first place.
* https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/8268 ensures that in the unlikely
case that there *is* an error, it won't cause an infinite loop.
This modifies the configuration of structured logging to be usable from
the standard Python logging configuration.
This also separates the formatting of logs from the transport allowing
JSON logs to files or standard logs to sockets.
We do this to prevent foot guns. The default config uses a MemoryFilter,
but users are free to change to logging to files directly. If they do
then they have to ensure to set the `filters: [context]` on the right
handler, otherwise records get written with the wrong context.
Instead we move the logic to happen when we generate a record, which is
when we *log* rather than *handle*.
(It's possible to add filters to loggers in the config, however they
don't apply to descendant loggers and so they have to be manually set on
*every* logger used in the code base)
* Change default log config to buffer by default.
This batches up writes to the filesystem, which is more efficient for
disk I/O. This means that it can take some time for logs to get written
to disk. Note that ERROR logs (and above) immediately flush the buffer.
This only effects new installs, as we only write the log config if
started with `--generate-config` (in the same way we do for generating
signing keys).
* Default to keeping last 4 days of logs.
This hopefully reduces the amount of logs kept for new servers. Keeping
the last 1GB of logs is likely overkill for new servers, but equally may
not be enough for busy ones.
Instead, we keep the last four days worth of logs, enough so that admins
can investigate any problems that happened over e.g. a long weekend.
Richard van der Hoff