// , The one line answer to "how do I set my logging level to debug?" is usually something like the following:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)

However, one may be tempted to change it later, back to something like INFO.

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)

This does not work, however. logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO), if run again at the same scope in the same process, will not result in a change to the level of the messages logged.

The official Python documentation, near the middle of https://docs.python.org/2/howto/logging.html#logging-to-a-file, lists the following:

The call to basicConfig() should come before any calls to debug(), info() etc. As it’s intended as a one-off simple configuration facility, only the first call will actually do anything: subsequent calls are effectively no-ops.

Source: https://docs.python.org/2/howto/logging.html#logging-basic-tutorial

Neither, however, does Logger.setLevel() work for this.

The following code attempts to set a lower log level:

logging.basicConfig(level=logging.DEBUG)
logging.debug("setting logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARNING)")
logging.debug(myLogger.getEffectiveLevel())
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARNING) # This does nothing. 
logging.getLogger('root').setLevel(level=logging.WARNING)
logging.debug(myLogger.getEffectiveLevel())
logging.debug("logger root, currently at " \
            + str(logging.getLogger('root').getEffectiveLevel()) \
            + " is enabled for" \
            + str(logging.getLogger('root').isEnabledFor(logging.DEBUG)))

This results in the following output:

DEBUG:root:setting logging.basicConfig(level=logging.WARNING)
DEBUG:root:10
DEBUG:root:30
DEBUG:root:30is enabled forFalse

It seems like one cannot "set" a Logger to a lower level of verbosity without access to something else created with logging.basicConfig().

How does a Python script change its logging level halfway through execution?