I set verbose to 1 so certbot output has more info. Can I make the log files less verbose? Every certbot command has thousands of lines in log files it's too much info to follow what is happening.
What's your exact command to set the verbose logging? docs say verbosity increases with -v -vv -vvv etc
Why are you logging verbosely? Are you trying to solve a specific problem?
I think that is just for the output to the console, not the log level info. The default verbosity is zero yet the default log is detailed. See this posters other thread too.
Just ran a test. -v options (or --verbose) only affects console output. Using -vvv outputs to console a similar detail of output as shown in the log. The log size was not affected by -v/--verbose
You can redirect most of the Certbot console output using 2>output.txt and use your preferred -v, -vv, -vvv setting to control verbosity
Can the log file output be configured so it's possible to find issues easier?
Traditionally verbose logging is for low level debugging of a process, the standard (non verbose) logs should be enough to identify standard certificate order/validation issues.
I usually start by searching the log file for the string "error".
[that tends to find most problems quickly]