log4j.debug

log4j.debug

I don’t know how many times my logging configuration has failed me (or have I failed it?):

log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (…).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.

This simple Java VM option definition helps me to solve the problem:

-Dlog4j.debug

Just add it to the VM’s command-line and Log4j reports where it’s looking for its configuration information and what it’s doing with it:

log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using context classloader WebappClassLoader
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
———-> Parent Classloader:
org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader@4c4975
.
log4j: Trying to find [log4j.xml] using WebappClassLoader
delegate: false
repositories:
/WEB-INF/classes/
———-> Parent Classloader:
org.apache.catalina.loader.StandardClassLoader@4c4975
…
log4j: Using URL [file:/C:/apache-tomcat-6.0.16/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties] for automatic log4j configuration.
log4j: Reading configuration from URL file:/C:/apache-tomcat-6.0.16/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties
log4j: Parsing for [root] with value=[INFO, stdout, logfile].
log4j: Level token is [INFO].
log4j: Category root set to INFO
log4j: Parsing appender named “stdout”.
log4j: Parsing layout options for “stdout”.
log4j: Setting property [conversionPattern] to [%d %p [%c] – %m%n].
log4j: End of parsing for “stdout”.
log4j: Parsed “stdout” options.

Which frees me to either tell it to look elsewhere or change where I have placed the file.