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Event Logging

The core job of Remote Logger is listening to either the root system logger (Python logging) or subscribe to the system_log_events raised by Home Assistant, and forwarding on as Syslog or OTLP messages. The resulting message is the same whatever mechanism is used, the main difference is the Root Logger approach allows INFO or DEBUG logs.

However, it can also be useful to listen and log many of the other events that Home Assistant emits.

Home Assistant Events

Selecting Events in Remote Logger

The free-form event box can be used as an alternative to pick specific Home Assistant events, or any other custom component events. Its easy to log whole categories of these from the Remote Logger configuration, or select individual ones you need. State changes can be huge in volume, and can also stress log aggregators by creating huge numbers of columns, so Remote Logger offers two versions of state logging - the bare state, or the full version with attributes ( and also a choice in how events are sent over JSON, as simplified messages, or full raw native ones with all the fields).

Bundle Description
Lifecycle Home Assistant server start and stop events
Core Changes Components and services loading or unloading, config reapplied
Core Activity Actions, mobile actions, scripts, automations executed
State Changes Entity state changes and log book entries, with states stripped of attributes and context to avoid huge log entries
Full State Changes Entity state changes and log book entries, full and untrimmed

Beyond Home Assistant

Debugging issues is much easier with full context, not only from Home Assistant itself, also add-on Apps running in HAOS, and other services on the network. For example, include logging from Frigate via a Docker syslog or OTLP collector, or network issues from a Unifi or OPNSense installation.

OpenObserve, GreptimeDB and similar tools (there's a big list of OTEL vendors and projects) can also pull in metrics and traces, for a fuller picture, though its also easy to get overwhelmed - CPU, storage, mentally - by the sheer scale of what could be aggregated, even in a home lab.

See the examples for working configuration.