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Configuration Snippet Parameter Snippet

log_line_prefix

  1. Documentation
  2. Reporting and Logging
  3. What to Log
  4. log_line_prefix
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Type: string
Default: %m [%p]
Context: sighup
Restart: false
Controls information prefixed to each log line

This is a printf-style string that is output at the beginning of each log line. % characters begin escape sequences that are replaced with status information as outlined below. Unrecognized escapes are ignored. Other characters are copied straight to the log line. Some escapes are only recognized by session processes, and will be treated as empty by background processes such as the main server process. Status information may be aligned either left or right by specifying a numeric literal after the % and before the option. A negative value will cause the status information to be padded on the right with spaces to give it a minimum width, whereas a positive value will pad on the left. Padding can be useful to aid human readability in log files.

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default is '%m [%p] ' which logs a time stamp and the process ID.

EscapeEffectSession only%aApplication nameyes%uUser nameyes%dDatabase nameyes%rRemote host name or IP address, and remote portyes%hRemote host name or IP addressyes%bBackend typeno%pProcess IDno%PProcess ID of the parallel group leader, if this process is a parallel query workerno%tTime stamp without millisecondsno%mTime stamp with millisecondsno%nTime stamp with milliseconds (as a Unix epoch)no%iCommand tag: type of session's current commandyes%eSQLSTATE error codeno%cSession ID: see belowno%lNumber of the log line for each session or process, starting at 1no%sProcess start time stampno%vVirtual transaction ID (procNumber/localXID); see transaction-idno%xTransaction ID (0 if none is assigned); see transaction-idno%qProduces no output, but tells non-session processes to stop at this point in the string; ignored by session processesno%QQuery identifier of the current query. Query identifiers are not computed by default, so this field will be zero unless compute_query_id parameter is enabled or a third-party module that computes query identifiers is configured.yes%%Literal %no

The backend type corresponds to the column backend_type in the view pg_stat_activity, but additional types can appear in the log that don't show in that view.

The %c escape prints a quasi-unique session identifier, consisting of two 4-byte hexadecimal numbers (without leading zeros) separated by a dot. The numbers are the process start time and the process ID, so %c can also be used as a space saving way of printing those items. For example, to generate the session identifier from pg_stat_activity, use this query:SELECT to_hex(trunc(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM backend_start))::integer) || '.' || to_hex(pid)FROM pg_stat_activity;

If you set a nonempty value for log_line_prefix, you should usually make its last character be a space, to provide visual separation from the rest of the log line. A punctuation character can be used too.

Syslog produces its own time stamp and process ID information, so you probably do not want to include those escapes if you are logging to syslog.

The %q escape is useful when including information that is only available in session (backend) context like user or database name. For example:log_line_prefix = '%m [%p] %q%u@%d/%a '

The %Q escape always reports a zero identifier for lines output by log_statement because log_statement generates output before an identifier can be calculated, including invalid statements for which an identifier cannot be calculated.
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Primarily useful for providing extra information when logging to syslog or eventlog. Try "%h:%d:%u:%c %t" for this.
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