cloud-init.log inconsistent date format

[Darik Horn]

The first field of the /var/log/cloud-init.log file alternates between ISO and local date formats. In the attached example, the change happens at:

 2014-08-03 01:45:53,472 - util.py[DEBUG]: Read 12 bytes from /proc/uptime
 2014-08-03 01:45:53,472 - util.py[DEBUG]: cloud-init mode 'init' took 12.704 seconds (12.71)
 Aug 3 01:45:56 test209 [CLOUDINIT] util.py[DEBUG]: Cloud-init v. 0.7.5 running 'modules:config' at Sun, 03 Aug 2014 01:45:56 +0000. Up 94.33 seconds.
 Aug 3 01:45:56 test209 [CLOUDINIT] importer.py[DEBUG]: Looking for modules ['cc_emit_upstart', 'cloudinit.config.cc_emit_upstart'] that have attributes ['handle']

Expected behavior is consistency in the date format.

[Scott Moser (smoser)]

Well, i can give an explanation as to why this is the way it is, and how you could change it.
It is how it is because cloud-init first goes to /var/log/cloud-init.log "directly" as it runs before syslog is up.
Then, it transfers over to writing its logs to rsyslog, which in turn re-directs them there.

I agree that is annoying. maybe we could disable rsyslog logging by default (which might fix another isue).

Anyway, if you want consistentsy, you can set the format string in cloud.cfg.d/05_logging.cfg
or you could disable the attempt to use log_syslog.

To disable log_syslog, you could just do:

#cloud-config:
log_cfgs:
  - [ *log_base, *log_file ]

If you want to pass that in via user-data, you'd have to copy the content of those yaml references (see the file, you'll probably understand).

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Tracked in Github Issues as https://github.com/canonical/cloud-init/issues/2471