diff --git a/ocis/pkg/runtime/service/service.go b/ocis/pkg/runtime/service/service.go
index 78e8350edd..52d0ad166c 100644
--- a/ocis/pkg/runtime/service/service.go
+++ b/ocis/pkg/runtime/service/service.go
@@ -159,7 +159,7 @@ func Start(o ...Option) error {
 		FailureBackoff:   3 * time.Second,
 	})
 
-	// reva storages have their own logging. For consistency sake the top level logging will cascade to reva.
+	// reva storages have their own logging. For consistency's sake the top level logging will cascade to reva.
 	s.cfg.Storage.Log.Color = s.cfg.Log.Color
 	s.cfg.Storage.Log.Level = s.cfg.Log.Level
 	s.cfg.Storage.Log.Pretty = s.cfg.Log.Pretty
diff --git a/proxy/pkg/command/proxy_example_config.yaml b/proxy/pkg/command/proxy_example_config.yaml
index 0c2bff022d..4cfb08b5d5 100644
--- a/proxy/pkg/command/proxy_example_config.yaml
+++ b/proxy/pkg/command/proxy_example_config.yaml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
-log:
-  level: info
-  color: true
-  pretty: true
+#log:
+#  level: debug
+#  color: false
+#  pretty: false
 http:
   addr: "${PROXY_HTTP_ADDR|localhost:2222}"
diff --git a/proxy/pkg/command/root.go b/proxy/pkg/command/root.go
index fcba39fd32..eab14795d3 100644
--- a/proxy/pkg/command/root.go
+++ b/proxy/pkg/command/root.go
@@ -78,15 +78,12 @@ func ParseConfig(c *cli.Context, cfg *config.Config) error {
 	// TODO(refs) load from expected locations with the expected name
 	err := cnf.LoadFiles("/Users/aunger/code/owncloud/ocis/proxy/pkg/command/proxy_example_config.yaml")
 	if err != nil {
-		panic(err)
+		return err
 	}
 
 	// bind all keys to cfg, as we expect an entire proxy.[yaml, toml...] to define all keys and not only sub values.
 	err = cnf.BindStruct("", cfg)
 
-	// step 2: overwrite the config values with those from ENV variables. Sadly the library only parses config files and does
-	// not support tags for env variables.
-
 	return nil
 }
 
@@ -97,10 +94,10 @@ type SutureService struct {
 
 // NewSutureService creates a new proxy.SutureService
 func NewSutureService(cfg *ociscfg.Config) suture.Service {
+	inheritLogging(cfg)
 	if cfg.Mode == 0 {
 		cfg.Proxy.Supervised = true
 	}
-	cfg.Proxy.Log.File = cfg.Log.File
 	return SutureService{
 		cfg: cfg.Proxy,
 	}
@@ -114,3 +111,13 @@ func (s SutureService) Serve(ctx context.Context) error {
 
 	return nil
 }
+
+// inheritLogging is a poor man's global logging state tip-toeing around circular dependencies. It sets the logging
+// of the service to whatever is in the higher config (in this case coming from ocis.yaml) and sets them as defaults,
+// being overwritten when the extension parses its config file / env variables.
+func inheritLogging(cfg *ociscfg.Config) {
+	cfg.Proxy.Log.File = cfg.Log.File
+	cfg.Proxy.Log.Color = cfg.Log.Color
+	cfg.Proxy.Log.Pretty = cfg.Log.Pretty
+	cfg.Proxy.Log.Level = cfg.Log.Level
+}