Support Streaming Event Logs to stdout

The idea is:

Add an option to stream n8n event logs directly to stdout/stderr instead of only writing to a log file.

My use case:

When deploying n8n to Kubernetes using a Helm chart, event logs written to /home/node/.n8n/n8nEventLog.log are trapped within the container filesystem. This makes it difficult to:

  • Ingest logs into centralized monitoring systems (like ELK, Datadog, Prometheus)
  • View logs through Kubernetes log collection mechanisms
  • Persist logs beyond the container lifecycle

I think it would be beneficial to add this because:

  1. It follows the container best practice of treating logs as event streams
  2. It simplifies integration with cloud-native logging infrastructure
  3. It reduces the need for log sidecar containers or volume mounts just for logs
  4. The community would gain greater visibility into their n8n deployments

Implementation thoughts:

  • Add a configuration option (environment variable like N8N_EVENTBUS_LOGWRITER_OUTPUT=stdout)
  • Support multiple outputs simultaneously (file + stdout)
  • Ensure log formats are consistent between file and stdout output